


World Snake

by SpinnerDolphin



Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: ALSO THE OCEAN, Gen, Gen or Pre-Slash, Loki & Tony Stark Friendship, Loki's Kids, THE OCEAN IS SO COOL GUYS, Tony makes strange friends, including a very large snake, various aliens
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-23
Updated: 2018-12-01
Packaged: 2019-08-06 14:44:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 9
Words: 30,674
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16389671
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SpinnerDolphin/pseuds/SpinnerDolphin
Summary: In which Tony makes a truly bizarre friend, Jormungandr is delighted to talk to someone who isn't a marlin, and Loki finds out that at least one of his children is neither dead nor insane. And the whole world tilts on its axis.Also, the fish are getting smaller, and that's a problem when you're a giant sea serpent.





	1. Chapter 1: Jormugandr

Odin Spear-shaker was a coward.

My father screamed that when I was taken, tears staining his cheeks with horror and misery. There was more, I think, but I was quite young and quite afraid, and I have since forgotten. It was a very long time ago, after all. Many lifetimes.

But I remember that my father cried. He loved us unreservedly. I remember that too.

I remember playing chasing games with Fenrir and Sleipnir, and constantly losing. My father picked me up in his arms one day and said, “Well then, little one, I believe we have learned something.” When I asked him what we possibly could have learned, besides the fact that I was the slowest child on all of Asgard, he shook his head with a mischievous smile. “When you cannot win the game,” he whispered, lips against the flat of my forehead, “change the rules.” And he tossed me into a pond. 

I thought he was mad, but then it turned out that legs, which made a person so very fast on land, made that same person so very slow in water. Sleipnir flailed, Fenrir paddled, and I won every game before me—provided it was in the pond. He had been so proud of me. 

He was a dream, my father. He directed Fenrir’s wildness, soothed Sleipnir’s skittishness, and stopped me, ever so gently, from biting my own tail. “You are venomous, Jörmungandr,” he told me. “You’ll poison yourself, and then you’ll be trapped.”

 “Trapped?” I asked.

“Let me tell you of the ouroboros,” he said with a smile, and my brothers gathered near for the lesson. The serpent who ate his tail: life and death together, repeating, to infinity. A symbol of the cyclic nature of the world, for the end and the beginning wrapped up together--ensnared. I never bit my tail again after that. I did not want to be a symbol; I wanted to be Jörmungandr. But I remembered the lesson.

Of my mother I remember little, except that she was a wild thing, wilder than even Fenrir. She came to see us but rarely. I think she broke my father’s heart. I thought about that, from time to time, in the long years after. I wondered about him. I missed him, and my brothers, though it had been many years since I had seen them last in that ghastly court. I wondered if they missed me.

Odin Spear-shaker was a coward. We weren’t bothering anyone; they didn’t even know we existed, for father kept us secret. But then, I suppose we were still troublesome, because my father was a prince, and he had apparently been shirking his duties to play with us. The soldiers of Asgard were cruel in their fear, dragging us from our hiding place to the great castle.

Odin proclaimed that I was the child of prophesy: destined to battle Thor and begin the end of everything. I only glimpsed Thor then, my father’s brother: huge and golden, and he gripped his hammer eagerly. I turned, terrified, for my father, but Odin cast me away before I could reach him, to the sound of my father’s fading pleas. I knew not what happened to my brothers.

I was so fortunate that my father had taught me to swim—and how not to bite my tail.

Odin banished me to Midgard’s oceans, vast and deep. When I had not yet reached my centennial, they were terrifying. But soon I was larger than the saltwater crocodiles close to shore, and the frightening, curious dolphins farther out. The Humboldt squid gave me trouble in the night, for though they had legs they were fast and vicious. I thought the orcas were _the worst thing_ Midgard could possibly have to offer, and then I met a cookie cutter shark.

I soon grew large enough to frighten the orcas. The cookie cutter sharks, however, had no fear.

But despite the horrid little beasts, and the wounds they leave and the parasites that follow, Midgard’s oceans became my home. And they were wonderful, fascinating oceans.

There were all kinds of little snakes to be found: bright orange and blue and striped, and they laughed at my huge size. _Where is your home, brother?_ they would call, all delight, _how do you hunt? You cannot fit in the crevasses on the reef!_

 _I hunt the great whale sharks in the open blue,_ I told them, _and the basking sharks, and the giant rays. Have you seen any?_

They pointed me in the right direction and laughed. The sea-snakes were such lovely company. They were always curious, always laughing. I visited them when I could.

But my chosen prey had been shrinking of late: the blue whales, and the basking sharks – which I preferred, actually, since sharks had a nicer texture and the whales begged for their lives. I quite disliked having to harden my heart to them. 

I had been investigating the decreasing size, and it turned out that it was everything: from the whale sharks to the tuna and swordfish. When I was young I ate the tuna; now they were too much effort for not enough meat. The billed fish were skilled fighters, and not worth the pain. I befriended them instead: a marlin told me that it was the Midgardians, the humans, and the great nets. 

This made a kind of sense. I had seen them take fish from the sea before and I could hear them sometimes, too, tearing up the sponge forests with their trawls, slaughtering by the thousands.

Their castaway garbage and their endless hunger: it drove me in a rage towards their coastline. I did not have any particular plan, only anger, but it was sucked away abruptly as if by a passing ray.

As I got close to shore, something fell from the sky with a very loud crash.  More than a little startled, I looped myself around to get a better look.

There was a man sinking slowly before my eyes. At least, I thought it was a man. He was encased in some kind of metal armor, but there was a gash in the red and gold: water was seeping through very quickly, sending bubbles up to the sky.

I looked up. There was another Midgardian—no—no heartbeat. The shape of another Midgardian in the sky. Made of metal. It had struck the live one down.

I could have crunched the live one without a second thought, metal casing or no, but I was curious, and thought that perhaps I could get an explanation out of him about the fish and the garbage. Besides that, it had been a very long time since I had last spoken to a man.

Very carefully, and without deploying my fangs, I grasped the Midgardian in my jaws and then spirited him away, quick as a mako shark. His heart was beating very fast and he struggled. He was going to drown if I took too long, but I wanted to get him away from the thing that had struck him down.

He started to go limp, after a short period of time. I judged that we had gone far enough out into the open ocean to surface, so I pushed my head up over the top of the water to take a breath. Salt spray casted rainbows—I liked it when that happened.

I scanned the sky. Nothing.

Very carefully, I released my man, and then got my nose under him so I could lift him to the surface to breathe. Immediately, he flung off the helmet from his head and started coughing, gasping for air. The helmet bounced off my nose and down into the water with a splash.

I caught it in my tail. He’d probably want it back.

“I’m sorry for holding you under,” I told him, as quietly as I could. I knew I could be very loud, especially for someone on my nose. The hourglass dolphins had told me so. “I was worried that the metal creature would kill you, if I brought you up too soon. Are you alright?”

The man gave one more hacking cough. He wheezed, and didn’t answer, flopping down on my nose. His head was just above my left nostril, his feet below my right eye. The tears in his metal suit were jagged and uncomfortable, but they didn’t hurt.

“Excuse me,” I said, after an awkward pause. He groaned. _“Excuse me,”_ I repeated.

“Oh god, you’re still there,” he said.

I blinked. “Of course I’m still here; you’re _lying_ on me.”

“I was hoping it was a very vivid hallucination. That happens sometimes. Am I dead? Did that bastard kill me?” His voice was rapid fire, with a strange intonation. Father had taught me the Allspeech at his knee (or rather, from around his shoulders), but I had not spoken to a Midgardian in many long years. Their language must have changed. It took some getting used to.  

“He didn’t kill you. I saved you,” I said.

He hit his head against my left nostril. “Of course you did,” he muttered. He hit his head against my nostril again.  

I huffed, sending up a small spray from the general damp, and he startled. “That hurts,” I said. It didn’t, really, but I still felt it.

He sat up and looked over at me, met my eyes. I’m told that mine are very large and very yellow. My scales, of course, are gray and white—respectably counter shaded, for a creature of the deep like me.

His eyes were very small and very brown, and they widened as I stared.

“Ooookay,” he said slowly. “Talking sea serpent. This is happening. Just had my life saved by a – a sea serpent. That talks. How—how did—why. Why did this happen. Who are you? What drugs am I on?”

I had no idea what a drug was. “My name is Jörmungandr,” I said. “What’s yours?”

“Yore—What?”

“Jörmungandr.” No one had ever gotten my name right. The snakes, the whales—no one. Something about Midgard, I imagine. “The dolphins call me Yee.”

The man stared. “Of course they do,” he sighed. “Cool. I’m calling you George. Why—I—okay, just, I’m— okay _what the fuck?_ ”

I blinked at him. My first thought, rather indignant, was that George was not even close to my name. My second was that I had no idea what he was talking about. “What’s your name?” I asked, instead. “Why are you encased in metal, and what was that—creature?”

The man sat up a little, crossing his legs on my snout. At least he was still looking me in the eye. He was very tiny, but very confident. I liked him. But then again, it was rare to have such a conversation at all, and I was rather pleased about it.  “Okay. Okay. My name’s Tony—Tony Stark. I’m wearing a metal suit because I’m Iron Man. And I have no fucking clue what that thing was, but it was going after cargo barges. Got a tracker on it now though, so there’s that. I guess I’m being an ass—it’s my default, sorry—thanks for, you know, the rescue.”

That made some sense, but not much. What was an Iron Man? “Nice to meet you Tony-Tony Stark,” I said, because I was nothing if not polite. My father had taught me that, at least.  

He laughed a little, breathless like he couldn’t quite believe it. “No, ah—just one Tony. You can just call me Tony.”

“Alright then. Tony, do you know why the fish are getting smaller?” That had been my main reason for rescuing him, after all.

Tony blinked at me. “The fish are getting smaller?”

I was about to answer him, when something—and I knew what it was—suddenly chomped down on my midsection and _tore._  I gasped and reared back, sending Tony tumbling into the ocean.

 _“Are you kidding?”_ Tony screeched, and I agreed with him. Thrice-damned cookie cutter sharks! With a snarl, I plunged down after the bastard, sending up a great wave and probably rocking poor Tony, but I didn’t care. My midsection burned and bled, sending up clouds of red behind me as I arrowed after the little monster.

The worst thing about the cookie cutters was that they were fast and clever, and this one was already gone—with a chunk of me, too. Furious, I turned around.

Ah—damn again. My new friend was floundering. His metal suit was probably very heavy when wet. I nosed him back up to the surface.

“Sorry,” I told him. “Something bit me.”

“Something _bit_ you?” Tony spluttered. “And you just dropped me into the ocean with what—whatever sea monster is trying to eat _you_?”

“Not a sea monster,” I told him, and then coiled the wounded section of me to show him. “A cookie cutter shark.”

Tony blinked. He sat down on my nose again and examined the wound. It was roughly the size of his fist, a great amount of flesh gouged out by the bastard’s razor sharp teeth. It hurt like anything, and bled sluggishly. “Ouch,” he said, after a moment. “What did you say did that?”

“Cookie cutter shark,” I repeated. “I hate them.” I may have been sulking.

“Yeah, no kidding. I mean, looks big to me, but you’re, you know, huge. Does it hurt?”

“Yes.” It really did.

“Well, I don’t really know if band-aids work on sea serpents, but if you take me back to land, I’ll see what I can do. I think I owe you a solid, anyway. You saved my life.”

I had no idea what a band aid was. “I don’t need a band-aid,” I told him, a little thickly. Sea serpents don’t _cry,_ but it really did hurt. “I need to know why the fish are smaller. Why are the men taking all the fish?” And if they were taking all the fish, I thought, why didn’t they take the damned cookie cutter sharks?

Tony opened his mouth and then closed it. “You know what? I’m going to be honest with you, Georgie—I have absolutely no idea. But I’ll look into it for you. Okay?”

I narrowed my eyes at him. “You’re not going to send out a hunting party after I take you back to land, will you? They tried that once. Midgardian men, I mean. It didn’t go well for them.” I hadn’t enjoyed sinking their ship, but it had been that or die. I’d eaten them, too. I hadn’t enjoyed that either. Midgardians didn’t taste nice the way whales and sharks did, but food was food.

“What? No. What would I—wait somebody _tried_ that? Why?”

“Men fear what they do not understand.”

Tony cocked his head. “That’s true enough. I won’t do that. In fact, I’ll come out here to meet you, okay? Um. Wherever here is.” He looked around.

There was nothing to be seen for miles, of course. All the landmarks were underwater.  “They call this place the Rivermouth,” I told him.

He raised an eyebrow. “This might come as a surprise to you,” he said. “But that is completely unhelpful. This isn’t a river. It’s the ocean.”

I rolled my eyes. “The river no longer exists. Its skeleton is under water.”

“Huh,” he said. “Fair enough. Who’s ‘they’?”

“The whales,” I said.

“Don’t be ridiculous. There aren’t any _whales_ in New York.”

“I don’t know where New York is,” I told him, apologetically, “But there are whales here. And if I don’t find large enough fish, I’ll have to start hunting them. I don’t like hunting whales. Particularly not the humpbacks. They sing such lovely songs.” It was true. And I didn’t like the way the water turned red with their blood, how they screamed for mercy.

But I was a very large serpent, and I had to eat. There were few things large enough to fill my stomach. 

“I—okay. Okay, you know what? Sure. The Rivermouth. I’ll come back here in—let’s say two to five days. And I’ll tell you the deal with the fish. If you drop me off close enough to land to get home without drowning. Sounds good?”

“Sounds good,” I said, and started to slip in close to land. “If I see an inbound barge, I’ll drop you off.”

There were many inbound barges. Tony assured me that his New York was home to a great many ports. I left him on a ship with easy stealth – I had learned to navigate around the great ships long ago. As I watched them putter off—they were so silly, the barges—I wondered if I would see him again. It was worth waiting a few days, anyway.

Tony came back for me three days later, his strange metal suit drawing lines of condensation in the sky. I heard him calling my name—or, well, calling for George—so I lifted my head from the waves.

He was fairly high, so I whistled for him. Father was always impressed by my whistling. Apparently most snakes can’t do it.  

Tony curved downward, graceful as a gannet. Now that it wasn’t broken, I could see that his red and gold suit was quite elegant, and his flying was impressive. He came to a soft hover next to me and flipped up his helmet. “Hi, Georgie,” he said.

“Hello, Tony,” I said, amused. “Did you find out about the fish?”

He sighed. “Yeah. Sort of. Can I sit on you again?”

When I agreed, he landed carefully on my nose. “What do you mean by sort of?” I asked.

“Listen, buddy,” he said after a moment’s shifting uncomfortably, “The thing with the fish is that I can’t fix it. I’m going to do my best—but I won’t be able to even put a dent in it, really.”

 “I didn’t ask you to fix it,” I said. “I asked what was happening.”

Tony sighed again. “Yeah. So, the fish—I didn’t really know about it. Or think about it. Most of my stuff is humanitarian, right? Saving people. But you said the fish were getting smaller, so I looked into it and—yeah. The fish are getting smaller. There’s too many people in the world demanding too much fish, is the short answer. Fewer fish are living to old age, because we’re eating them. So the ones out in the ocean are smaller-- _younger_.  I threw some money at sustainable fishing research, and aquaculture, and I bought a few industrial fishing boats and decommissioned them, but it really isn’t my area, Georgie.”

I had suspected as much. “So you are stealing all the fish. The marlin was right.”

Tony grimaced. “Please don’t go all supervillain on me,” he said. “I like you. You’re a talking sea serpent and you’re awesome.”

“What’s a supervillain?” I asked. A little flattered at the idea that I was awesome, I wriggled my tail. I did like Tony, for all that my earlier anger had started to come back like a creeping tide.

“Kills people,” Tony said, strangely succinct.

“I don’t hurt people except when I’m hunting,” I told him. “And humans aren’t worth it. I’m not going to kill anyone unless I’m starving. I won’t hurt you. I like you too.”

Tony grinned, like he hadn’t expected that. “Then let’s be sure you’re not starving, huh? Are you okay with smaller fish? What do you eat, anyway, besides whales?”

“I’ve been eating the white sharks hunting seals off the Vineyard,” I said. “What _is_ a vineyard? That’s what the seals call it.”

“Martha’s Vineyard,” Tony said. “Yeah, I’ve heard there were sharks out there. Sorry—Vineyard’s where you grow these things called grapes and then make—well. Here, you make mediocre wine. It’s a drink. Supposed to be a fabulous drink, actually, though the stuff form around here sucks, something about the soil, but the good stuff’s the best thing next to scotch—guess you don’t have wine in the ocean, huh?”

Wine. Sweet and sour all at once. Bitter. Long ago, and far away, my father had let me try wine. I had forgotten. The memory was lovely and insubstantial as sunshine. I warmed further towards Tony – without realizing, he’d reminded me of home. “I’ve had wine,” I said, “when I was small.”

Tony patted my nose. “We can get you wine again. I can charter a fishing boat for you, too, if you like—it’ll catch a bunch of smaller fish in a net, and you can eat them right from there. What do you think?”

It seemed a little—unfair. But the white sharks were small, and I was quite hungry still. Besides, I was venomous. All hunting was essentially unfair.

“I’ll try it,” I said.

“Awesome,” said Tony. “Let me see what I can do.”


	2. Chapter 2: Tony

So I didn’t tell Pepper.

It kind of violated Rule One, which was to always tell Pepper, but Georgie was more Avengers Business than Stark Industries Business and moreover, I think he would freak her out. And also—well.

I liked him. He was all right, for a fucking enormous sea serpent, with fangs the length of my arms and eyes the size of my head. He was curious, and he was funny, and strangely guileless: there was nothing deceitful or slimy about him. He was a fucking huge sea snake. What you see is what you get. I liked that. It was kind of a relief after, you know—basically my day-to-day existence of Being Tony Stark. 

And, god, the shit he said— took me forever to figure out that the Rivermouth was actually the mouth of an ancient Hudson River delta, carved into the bedrock during the ice ages when the sea level was low. The tiny geek out party in my head was –not so tiny. There may have been balloons and streamers involved. I’m all about the science, even if it’s not my science, and the deep sea is less explored than the moon. With the added benefit of still being on earth because after the Chitauri, seriously, fuck space. 

Conscripting a sea snake is _way_ cheaper than building an ROV or a submersible. That was a thought I had, because the other day Pepper accused me of being extravagant. Extravagant! Me! As if I can’t afford to be extravagant! That’s practically my middle name. But Pepper was Pepper, so I threw together a Crittercam that could handle the pressure change. I still got to work designing a submersible and some ROVs anyway. Just for fun, really, because why not? I mean, they’re still using the Alvin. That thing was commissioned in the sixties. What the fuck? And REMUS? Please. I could make something so much better.

I also took a poll. “Avengers!”

Someone, somewhere, had taught Steve Rogers about Skype. Mostly. He still looked a little unsure about the whole business, blinking at me from the image against the workshop wall. With a crash, and—trailing some sort of alarming wires?—Dummy raced across the floor, blocking the display screen, blue light reflecting off his chassis.  

 “Do you have any idea what time it is in London, Tony?” Natasha sighed from her little square.

“I have no idea what time it is in New York,” I told her, sipping my coffee. “Come on, Widow. Please. Do any of you know how to fish?”

Bleary-eyed, Bruce blinked at me. “Like, with a rod or—?”

“No, sorry, _that’s_ why you called us, Stark?” Clint blurted. “It’s one in the morning!”

Hey, now I knew what time it was in New York. And also London, from that. Take that, Natasha. Six in the morning wasn’t _that_ bad. “Yes, and I am having a fishing-related emergency,” I said virtuously. They didn’t need to know about Georgie. Not yet, anyway. They’d probably want to take him down, if I told them, and he was harmless. Mostly. 

Provided we kept him fed. Which was the plan.  

It was one of the reasons I liked Georgie. Giant fucking sea serpents were not exactly built for subtilty, and this apparently translated into his personality. He was a big—well, humongous—sweetheart, who didn’t like killing whales. Or people. He’d plonked me on that barge so quietly that the men on the ship hadn’t even noticed. He could’ve knocked that thing over like a kid kicking at sand castles, but he didn’t even rock it.

He was so big that he could spend his whole life taking out commercial fishing vessels and eating their catch, but this had apparently not occurred to him. I wasn’t going to bring the Avengers down on someone like that.

So I wanted to buy him lunch. Sue me.

“A fishing related emergency,” Steve echoed.

“Look, just—can anyone operate a fishing boat?”

I’d tried asking Rhodey. He’d hung up on me. It had stung, it really had.

I mean, I could have hired outside. I had thought about it. I had to hire at least one guy, anyway—I needed someone with a license, and a boat. There are a surprising amount of fishermen in the New York Bight. But I wanted someone else on-side. I was sort of hoping for Bruce.

“A _commercial_ fishing boat?” Bruce said.

“Yep. Tell me you can, Brucie.” I mean, I probably could have gone out on my own and figured it out. It’s not exactly rocket science. But it looked—kind of tedious. I’ve never really done well with tedious.

Bruce shook his head, looking somehow incredulous, amused, and the tiniest bit disappointed. “Sorry, Tony. I can do seining from shore, but not from a boat.”

I had no idea what seining was. I glanced to one of JARVIS’ cameras, and the workbench in front of me lit up with an image: two people hauling a vertical net and catching fish from shore. Ah. Georgie was teaching me all kinds of new things. It was kind of fun and shiny and all that jazz. 

“Anyone else?”

No takers. Out by myself it is, I thought, disappointed. What was the point of having friends if they couldn’t actually do anything when you needed them? It wasn’t like I didn’t build them things all the time.

But then—

“I’m in the area,” Clint said, nonchalant, “And I had to do this industrial pollock thing, once. I could try.”

Delight came in slowly, like the tide, but it felt like it filled me to the brim. “Oh, Barton,” I said, “We are going to have so much damn fun. Just promise not to tell Pepper.”

Everyone’s eyes went round, but I hung up on them. “Hey, Jarv,” I said, sitting back in my chair.

“Yes, sir?”

“Make sure they can’t call Pepper.”

“Of course, sir. Has it occurred to you that their impulse to call Ms. Potts might, perhaps, be for your own good?”

“Are you giving me lip, JARVIS?”

“Oh, never, sir.”

I had no idea who taught him sarcasm. I wasn’t sure whether to be proud or horrified about it, to be honest.

The next thing on the agenda was the tracking device I’d stuck on that weird metal robot. It had gone dead by the time I’d gotten back to my tower, but its track had shown a long, arching line to South America of all places. Thinking to build a probe to go down there to investigate, I sort of—doodled with scraps. Hey, everyone doodles. I’m sure Michelangelo doodled, okay. I was most definitely on my way to a masterpiece. Or something.

I was just reaching for a welder when the lights of the lab kicked off. Not the building—just the lab. Definitely Dummy, that little shit, and sure enough there he was with that wire wrapped around him, stuck in an electrical socket. I had no idea what he was trying to do, or how he’d even managed that, but the rest of the night was spent wrangling my demented bot back to his charging station.

I was just wrapping up my lecture as I detangled him when there was a knock at the workshop door. I waved a hand and JARVIS let the man in: Clint Barton, dressed for battle, with a bow and quiver on his back.

Of course, I didn’t realize he was dressed to Avenge until after I pulled the rest of the wire from Dummy, who was sulking and not looking at me. Balling it up in my fist, I turned to say hello to the hawkguy, when I saw his bow.

“What the hell, Barton? You are so leaving that here. Where do you think I’m taking you?” No bows and arrows for Georgie! There was no Avenging going on anywhere in the vicinity of my snake.

Clint was more smug than confused, the bastard. “You said it was a fishing related emergency. I have a particular skillset.”

“What? No. What the hell is wrong with you? Not _that_ skillset. You’re going to leave that here and I’m swearing you to secrecy.”

“Are you kidding me? No. No on both counts. What the fuck, Stark?”

This wasn’t going to get anywhere. Also, he drove a hard bargain. “Okay. You can take the bow. But the secrecy thing stands. Deal?”

Clint eyed me. “Deal. What’s the emergency?”

“I made friends with a sea serpent.”

“You what.”

I snapped my fingers at him. “A sea serpent, keep up! His name is George.”

“A sea serpent named George.”

“Well, it’s actually Yormongnomnom or something but I can’t pronounce it so I called him George.”

Clint eyed me again. “Stark. I think you may have actually lost your mind.”

“Oh, that happened ages ago. But Georgie is having a problem because of overfishing and I agreed to help him by catching some fish, but I needed someone to operate the net.” I gave him a winning smile.

“Oh no. I am not going out in the ocean alone to feed a _sea serpent_ —are you listening to yourself?”

“Not alone! He won’t come up for you. I’m coming too.”

Clint let his head droop into his palm. “Oh, _this_ should be interesting,” he muttered.

“Life of an Avenger!” I said and beckoned him out. Dummy, in his charging station, gave a sort of forlorn chirp, but he was still in time out for the wire thing, so it only tugged my heart a little.

I had a guy meet us down at Pier A, at the bottom of Manhattan. It’s not _really_ a marina anymore, but I’m Tony Stark, so. The little boat was there.

It was a commercial fishing boat—god knew how JARVIS had found this guy. Two long rods stuck out like a very wide V from its stern, and its hull was painted blue. The captain introduced himself as Mike and he was all too happy to take a day off his regular fishing schedule, for the rate I was paying him. Since he was the one with the fishing license, he would be the one driving the boat.

“Hold up,” Clint said. “If you had a guy, why did you need me?”

“Deckhand,” I said, and when he growled, I added, “Also, honestly, I wanted an Avenger to meet Georgie. One at a time. Because he’s, you know, fucking huge and looks like he could bash things and eat people, but—he won’t.”

“Have you gone soft on me, Stark?”

I didn’t dignify that with a response.

We motored out. It was a clear fine day, though the fishing boat was not the kind of thing I would usually step foot on. I was more of a yacht man. But even still, she had a kind of charm to her. She was an honest working boat, which according to Mike, had weathered storm after storm. Her name was _Rose._

I warned Mike about the weirdness of this trip as we left New York Harbor, slowly passing under the Verrazano bridge. “So. I have to warn you. This is kind of Avengers business.”

Clint snorted. “Oh, don’t put this on us,” he said. “This is Weird Ass Tony Stark Business.”

Mike chuckled a little from where he was manning the wheel. We were all standing around in the cabin, the overhead bulb barely brighter than the light shining through the dingy windows. It was driving me crazy; at the end of the trip I was going to pick up some of my stuff and fix it for him. It was a wiring thing, but I had a feeling it translated to the rest of the boat and would be hours to fix—not because it was difficult, but because it was pervasive. Life on perpetual brownout. Kill me now.

 Beyond the windows, the Verrazano casted a shadow on the water. “I figured it was one of those two things, Mr. Stark,” Mike was saying. “What am I looking at?”

“Really, really fucking huge sea serpent,” I told him cheerfully, working hard not to glare too obviously at the offensive lightbulb. When he turned and gave me an alarmed look, I jacked up the charm. “Friendly though! He’s a friendly sea serpent. I wanted to buy him lunch, so, fishing boat.”

Mike blinked at me. “You made friends with a sea serpent and now you want to _go find it_?”

This was why I waited til we were by the Verrazano to discuss it. There was no going back from here, unless to Staten Island, and if he dropped us off on Staten Island I was so not going to pay him. Or fix his dumb electrical problem.

“He’s friendly! I swear he’s friendly.”

“ _Then why are we feeding him?_ ” Mike demanded. God, freaked out much.

“Because he hasn’t had a good meal in a while, because overfishing means a lot of the big fish are gone.”

Mike harrumphed. “The big fish aren’t gone. I caught a five foot bass just yesterday.”

“Seriously?” Clint looked delighted. “Where?”

“Just outside the Harbor – I’ll take you there, if you like. I brought some rods and reels just in case. I do rec stuff on the side, you know, because with the regs it’s so damned hard to make a living—”

Clint chatted with the guy some about the bass and whatever, but I’d never really been a fishing sort of guy. Slimy, you know. And boring. Some guys do the sportfishing thing, but I’d never really liked it. Dad used to say I was a sissy—that was his actual word, can you believe that?—for not wanting to kill a fish. Always felt unfair. The rod was a lever: fish never stood a chance. Poor bastard.

Golf was just as boring but not nearly as slimy. When I became a corporate hotshot, I went with golf.

Still, I’m nothing if not charming, and I do have to go on stupid fishing trips on occasion, so I kept up with the conversation. It was stultifying though, seriously. I was losing IQ points just by being there. And the browning light kept on _flickering,_ god I was going to lose my mind. If we didn’t get to the Rivermouth soon I was going to either kill someone or start compulsively fixing the boat.

Mike slowed the boat. “Here we are, Mr. Stark. Coordinates you requested.”

Thank fucking god. I trotted out of the cabin and away from its infuriating lightbulb. The fresh sea air was like balm to a wound, seriously, fuck bad engineering. Worse than seasickness. I leaned over the rail on the side of the stern. “Hey George!” I called, hands cupped around my mouth. “Georgie! I got you something!”

I felt Clint come to a rest at my shoulder. “You do realize you’re insane, right?” he drawled.

“Shut up. GEORGE!”

The boat rocked in the waves.

“Maybe he moved on,” Mike said uneasily. He’d come out of the cabin too, and stood beside Clint, hands on the side of the boat as he peered out to the horizon. “There’s nothing showing up on the radar.”

Nothing on the radar? That was—a little distressing. He was a fucking huge serpent. He should have definitely showed up on the radar. “He said he’d hang out here.”

In front of me, the water rippled. We all looked at it. A smooth gray nostril, the size of my torso, slipped from the waves and took a breath. George surfaced like a crocodile, just his face above the water. He blinked his huge yellow eyes and said nothing, though the corners crinkled like a smile.

His head was the length of a crocodile, too. One of the big ones.  Sixteen feet, maybe.

“Hey buddy,” I said. 

“Holy _shit,_ ” Clint said.

“But he’s not on the radar!” Mike blurted, voice high and cracking.

George lifted himself a little higher, so he could speak. “Hello Tony,” he said. “Who are your friends?”

“Why aren’t you showing up on the radar?” I asked instead of answering because I had to know. I had to. He was an enormous fucking snake. He should have been all over that.

“The little clicks?” George said. His voice was very soft, and not the slightest bit sibilant. It was like he took care to be quiet, because I was sure he could trumpet with the best of them if he wanted. “It’s something my father taught me when I was small. I don’t think I could explain it. It’s like winding in between boulders, except the boulders are the clicks. I’m sorry.”

“There’s more of you?” Clint said.

“No,” George said. “I’m banished. I’m too fearsome. My grandfather called me a monster.”

He sounded like that had broken his damn heart. “You’re not a monster,” I said. “Or anyway, if you are, you’re our monster now.  I like monsters. You could say I collect them. Right, Clint? Oh, sorry, this is Clint. He’s one of my monsters.”

“I am _so_ not your monster,” Clint muttered, but he still sounded sort of—awed. Good. No hurting Georgie. “What’s your name?” he asked. “Tony’s calling you George because he’s an ass, so I couldn’t get a straight answer out of him.”

George chuckled, or he made a sound that was like chuckling. “No one on Midgard can pronounce my name,” he said. “I’m used to it. The dolphins call me Yee, the snakes call me Sssyor, the whales call me—” and here he sang a funny downward slide of notes. “My name is Jörmungandr.”

I looked at Clint, who hummed. “Yormungandder,” he said. I forgot, sometimes, that Clint was a superspy like the Widow. One of his superspy skills would have to be names and accents. But Georgie said his name deep in his chest like a growl, and I didn’t really think that human vocal chords could do that. Still, Clint almost had it, and George wriggled, amused.

“Close,” he said, eyes all crinkly. “That was what the men of old called me, many years ago. Why are you a monster, Clint? You look like a regular human to me.”

Clint smiled. It wasn’t a nice smile. “That’s why I’m a monster,” he said. “I blend in. I’m the worst kind of monster there is, really. I look like a friend.”

George seemed to think about this, cocking his head to the side. “Oh,” he said, at last. “I see. That _is_ a terrible sort of monster.” There was no judgement or cruelty in his voice, instead almost admiration. “And who are you?” he looked at Mike.

“I’m just the boat captain,” said Mike. He was stoic, but he looked like he was going to piss himself. “Here to catch some fish for you.”

“Fish?” George looked back at me.

“Yeah,” I said. “We’re going to deploy nets, you can chase some fish in, and we’ll catch them. Then you can eat them.  Instead of one big fish, lots of little fish. So you won’t have to eat the whales. Sound like a deal?”

George’s eyes lit. Score. “Squid too? I miss squid. I ate them when I was little. They’re mostly too small now.”

“Whatever you want, buddy. Just chase it in our net.”

George wriggled. “There’s a school of striped bass farther out. And some squid. And bluefish. Where’s your net? Let me see!”

“You heard the man, Mike,” I said, even though he most definitely wasn’t a man. “Let’s do this!”

Mike got to work, but Clint caught my eye. “Tony,” he whispered.

“Hm?”

“Tony, he’s adorable. He’s a giant fucking snake. What’s wrong with me?”

“Nothing, he’s just actually adorable,” I told him, feeling totally vindicated. “See why I wanted an Avenger?”

“Yeah, oh god, if he ever comes to shore we’d have to—we’d probably get sent out to _fight_ him.”

This was the best idea ever. “Exactly. And if it were just me—” I let my voice trail because I didn’t want to say it. Not really. But if it had been just me telling them to stop, they probably wouldn’t have. But me _and_ Clint might get some traction.

I didn’t have to finish. Clint nodded. “Tasha will love him,” he said.

Natasha was scary as fuck. “I—what?”

“Tasha. She’ll love him. We should take her out next.”

“Mr. Barton!” Mike called. “I could use some help!”

Well, apparently the Avengers were going to get involved after all. Damnit.


	3. Chapter 3: Loki

Escape from Asgard was no simple matter. Escape after appearing to die—well. Still difficult, but easier than the other.

I have been an escape artist since I was a child.

Midgard was the easiest place in which to hide, much as it pained me. The pain was literal, too, for the stab wound that theoretically killed me was still there, and it burned like a sun.

The stab wound hurt, but it had missed my heart. And most other organs, in truth, because, as Thor forgot again, _I was a monster._ The Jotnar did not have their hearts in their chests, or if they did, it was not in that place. I knew not, but I knew he had missed my heart.

To be quite honest—not my wont, but sometimes necessary—in those long days spent healing myself, slow cell by slow cell, I wondered at Jotnar physiology. What the hell did their anatomy look like? Anatomy I shared. _I gave birth once._ Was that normal? Or indeed a shape-shifting mishap, as my lying father had decreed?

Thoughts of Sleipnir pained me. He was more my father’s steed than my darling, after all these years. I had been barely out of childhood myself—though who knew, with Jotnar? What the hell was the Jotenhiem year like—surely it wasn’t the same as the Asgardian. Was it faster, slower? How long did they live, these frozen monsters? No one had bothered to find out, least of all me.

Perhaps I had still been a child when I’d born Sleipnir. He’d been such a sweet thing, too. Always wanting attention.

“Always,” I whispered, and smiled darkly at myself and my sentiment. I twisted a hand and watched an illusion of my eldest gallop around me, too many legs and not enough body to support them.  He clattered along the stones, ungainly.

I sat in an ancient Midgardian temple, sunlight spilling from the holes in the ceiling, feeling sorry for myself. There were places on Midgard that were hidden. Lost. Quiet ruins of civilizations, tucked away in the hearts of the rainforests. It was to there I fled for shelter.

The sounds of little Sleipnir’s hooves were just an illusion, but it helped some.  

Odin. Liar, deceiver worse than me—coward. The old rage joined with the new, no longer banked. But I would see my revenge soon enough.

I leaned my head back against the stone wall and sucked in a breath.

The Midgardian temple was not as luxurious as my prison cell, it was true, but it was better than having my lips sewn shut, which they had been threatening to do for centuries. And at least I had chosen this place, uncomfortable though it was. What was it the mortals said—better to rule in hell?

I must have fallen asleep at some point, because I woke up feeling like shit. Well, better than previous—less pain—but still like shit. Stiff and sore and stinking. Ugh.

The little illusion had fallen asleep in a patch of sunshine. I must have slept through the night, or perhaps a few nights. Still slumped, I watched his steel-colored back rise and fall as if breathing. Merely a trick of the light, but a pretty fantasy. Worth every drop of effort. My sweet boy.

It was enough lying about. I pushed myself up, slow and careful. The little illusion came to help me when I staggered.

“You’ll be hungry,” Illusion-Sleipnir said. “You have to eat, father. All that healing won’t do you any good if you starve to death.”

I banished him. Enough with the maudlin fantasies. They weren’t ever coming back. It had been thousands of years. They were gone. It was time to move.

I didn’t manage to get myself truly upright for another day or so. By that point the illusion’s prediction was correct: I did need to eat. I could go far longer than my brother without food—perhaps that, too, was a Jotnar trait—but after a healing like that I was in danger of starving. It was time for more. Time to be elsewhere, where I could find some sustenance.

The trick with teleportation was the sunlight. My idiot not-brother never bothered to learn. He was more than able, though perhaps not as willing to put in the long hours of study as I had been. It was doable in the dark by starlight, too, but sunlight was best.

 _A place where the light touches,_ I thought, and disappeared.

I had wanted a nearby city, really, somewhere I could steal from a vendor, maybe find a hotel for the night.  I felt one, too, not far—but something _wrenched_. I wasn’t ill, but it made me want to vomit because it was deeply, sickeningly familiar.  I staggered to my feet, and I was not in a city.

It was a beach. I darted to the nearest tree, casting three layers of invisibility upon myself. My heart, in its mysterious place, had started to race.

There were things that would throw off a teleportation spell. Another mage, perhaps, or a large generator. Something unfocused like the one I casted, in search of a city, might be pulled apart by very bright illumination, such as a spotlight, if a spotlight should imitate the sun. I had long learned to compensate for these things.

The thing that pulled me—an engine. I sucked in another breath and tried to let it out in a controlled manner, but mostly failed. A large engine. A warp core. A big one.

Of the same make as the Chitauri. Or rather, of Thanos.

Thanos was a magpie. His allies weren’t allies, I reminded myself. They were stolen, every one. The Chitauri were in truth a peaceful race. Similar to Midgard’s honeybees: there were tens of thousands of drones to one psychic queen. Thanos slaughtered six queens to create his army. The leviathans were simply animals, yoked and whipped into submission. Surely, surely the ships they used in deep space were stolen, too. Or perhaps bought with blood gold. It may not be him.

I told myself this twice before peering out from behind the tree. It still took all of my courage. The scars Thanos left ran deep.

But it was not Thanos. Thank the Norns.

Instead it was—someone. Tall and thin and red, there must have been two hundred of them. They were pulling a great net out of the ocean and onto the sand. On second glance, the net wasn’t quite a net either—made of energy, it had great gaping mesh. Tangled within was the largest fish I had ever seen, this including the beasts we had on Asgard.  I did not know they grew that big on Midgard.

They were singing, too, these strange creatures, though the words in Allspeech made little sense. _Food for the all-great Queen to bear us fruit again._ Were they a hive mind, too? What the hell were they doing on Midgard?

And, something quiet and worried whispered in the back of my mind, was Jörmungandr in danger?  

My heart clenched. It was a foolish notion. Jörmungandr had been cast out long ago. He had been so small. Midgard’s oceans were so vast and so wild. I had gone looking for him many times. He surely had died within six months in such a wilderness. Of all my children, he was the one well and truly gone.

I shook off the old grief. More immediately, I needed food. Badly. And if these creatures were hauling up great beasts from the deep, they would have the rest of the catch somewhere.

The glamour was a simple one, the second spell even simpler. I took the shape of the strange red creatures, and anyone looking my way would think me—unimportant. It was a simpler, more effective spell than one of invisibility.

Finding their haul – and their ship – was easy, once I realized that they were morons. They had casted several layers of hiding upon themselves: I had been inadvertently pulled through two of them. Within the two outer spells, which I sensed were powerful indeed, was some sort of cloak or invisibility over their ship. It was not only redundant, but such spells were imperfect, especially on sandy beaches.  Casually, I strolled over to the area that had seen the most foot traffic, the prints marked in the white sand. Sure enough, there was a door there, and I followed the sandy tracks down a long, wide hall, and into another room that looked like a great, circular lecture hall. The door slipped closed behind me.

Down at the bottom of the cone shaped room, something moved.

On occasion, I was a fool. I didn’t quite care about the ominous moving thing at the bottom of the spiral. Instead I drew a knife and sliced the pelvic fin from the nearest fish: a great, blue and white spotted creature, that slumped pathetically outside of water.

I cared not that it was raw and probably filthy. I devoured it, and then the other, and then got started on the caudal fin, which was at least twice my height, if not more.

I would be ashamed, but it was a cleverly done ambush, for all that I was the victim. I sat, and like a wild beast I ate, and I ate, and with each bite I felt better, and then slightly sleepy—at least until something large and sticky lashed my back and dragged me down six paces. I grasped at the grating and resisted the pull. I looked back.  

Shock ran down my spine. She looked nothing like her minions – this hive queen resembled nothing so much as an enormous, clawed frog and her gaping orange maw was lined with teeth. Her blue-black tongue was stuck to my back, a filthy, gummy thing that tugged—pulling me towards her. Since I wasn’t budging, clinging to the grate as I was, she was starting to approach, her claws clicking and catching. As she drew nearer, her size became more apparent; she was massive, grown fat on the gifts of her drones.

She would devour me, I knew. Just like a frog. Her minions had likely not brought her something alive and wriggling for a long time, if the great dead fish were anything to go by. Why not Midgardians?

Not worth wondering. _What the light touches!_ I thought as distinctly as I could. I did not want to risk another wide-ranging teleport again—not when the last one had landed me on a beach full of damned aliens. Unfortunately, the only places on Midgard I knew with any kind of familiarity were New Mexico, and New York. 

I had an affinity for Midgardian places near the sea. Old, useless hope. I took a breath and then bounced to my feet, standing before a park and a pier. That froggy queen had taken my jerkin, for her tongue had been stuck to it. Taking the jerkin meant taking her, and that would be completely idiotic. So I’d disappeared from within it, leaving it in that place. She’d likely swallowed it.

I had liked that jerkin. Probably for the better though—it still had a hole in it from the blade that had not killed me. As did my undershirt.

Regardless, I was still hungry, even after two and a half foul shark fins, and a city was the best place for food imaginable. Particularly food very quickly.

Unfortunately it was not to be. I had just gotten my hands on what the street vendor called a gyro, when someone stumbled into me.  When I turned to reprimand him, or turn him into something foul, I froze.

I knew those eyes.

Dr. Bruce Banner seemed just as surprised as I was, before he turned into the enormous green beast.

My luck was truly abysmal sometimes.

Teleporting again was out of the question. I was able to save the gyro, at least, in a dimensional pocket, but after the cave and the queen and the absurdity that had followed I was quite tired. Those days without food had taken their toll, so I ran. I ran quite fast, but the Hulk roared behind me, and that was probably not good. Where to go?

Underwater?

No—no not here, not when I didn’t know the river. The Norns knew what the currents were like, and I was still weak. The Hulk would care not for obstacles, but this part of the city seemed winding and poorly ordered: the kind of place made for getting lost. I ran away from the water and into the city, Hulk hot on my heels.

I sent out three illusions of myself as I ran past the shining brass bull, and the statue of the girl that stood before it. Each illusion raced down a different side street, and I heard the Hulk roar in frustration—but the damnable beast followed me. I sent out more illusions, and even more, ending up back at the water’s edge with that thing hard on my heels and then—

Something collided with my back, slipped under my arms, and I was up in the air before I could gasp.

Fuck.

“Alright, big guy, it’s alright! I got him! You can stand down, Big, Mean and Green! I got him!” The Man of Iron, with his arms locked under mine, held me aloft and shouted down to Hulk.

The Hulk roared below. The threat here was clear. If I cooperated, we hung midair; struggle, and the Man of Iron would drop me to the mercy of the beast. I did not fight that grip at all. I was still weak enough that—Big, Mean and Green—could, in fact, kill me.  On the contrary, I summoned back my gyro and started to eat it.

“Listen, buddy, I really don’t want to—hold on. Are you eating a gyro?” He’d clearly been about to spell out the completely obvious threat. I rolled my eyes.

Didn’t miss a trick, that Man of Iron. They all said he was a genius. What must the rest of Midgard look like, if this was their shining example of intelligence? I took another bite.

“You are. You are seriously eating a gyro. That’s just—where did you even _get_ that?”

“I purchased it,” I said, swallowing. I had. The money had been and illusion, but the vendor wouldn’t know that until sundown, when it would fade.

“You purchased it,” he echoed. Like a parrot. A fair impression since he was at the moment red, obnoxious, and flying.

I took another bite. It was quite good, actually. It was certainly better than shark fins covered in sand and whatever else was on the floor of a spaceship. It was rather messy, though. Bits of lettuce and sauce dripped from my grip to the ground below, and there was something, some flavor or texture that was ruining an otherwise pleasing meal. I could feel the Man of Iron watching me with fascination.

I pulled out something round and off-putting. “What is this?” I asked.

“Falafel,” the Man of Iron said, still sounding baffled.

“It is repulsive.” It was. The texture was too soft and dry, and I didn’t like the spices. The meat in the bread was far superior. It was still better than shark fins, but not by much.

“No way. You can’t not like falafels. That’s practically the point of a gyro!”

“The meat is better.” I threw the little ball. It hit a man below in his bald head, and that was quite satisfying. I fished out another. How many of them did the vendor _give_ me?

“You—what? No. No, you can’t just bean people with falafels. Give the rest to me, I’ll eat them, I’m actually starving, Jesus.”

“Oh?” I passed him a falafel. He was starving—useful information. Why? Why had he forsaken a meal? Was there something happening in New York?

To do with the red beasts, perhaps?

He took it, and then popped it in his mouth, then made a face. Quite trusting. I could have poisoned it.

“These are _dry,_ no wonder you don’t like them. Ugh, they’re awful.”

“Now may I bean people?”

He snickered. “Yes. See Bruce? Hit him.”

The green beast had transformed again: Bruce Banner paced below, shirtless and holding up a pair of stretched-out pants, on a mobile phone. It probably spelled bad news for me, but I decided to wait it out and at least finish the gryo.

But there was no way I was hitting him with discarded food. I was not, in fact, suicidal. “Hardly. Are you going to put me down?”

“Nope. Waiting for friends. In case you haven’t noticed, you _are_ a supervillain.”

I hadn’t, actually. That was fairly flattering. Still, none of this was good—Thor believed me dead. Was he on Midgard? Had I so quickly ruined my own plan to start over?

“I could just crush you,” I said, though I chewed on my gyro peaceably.

“Yeah, then you’re gonna fall thirty feet and _then_ you have to deal with Bruce’s alter ego, who won’t be pleased that you just crushed the tin man.”

I looked down. Banner had gone to a park bench. He was still on his mobile device.

I was screwed. I finished my last bite of gyro.

I might have one more in me, I thought. Now that I’d eaten something, I might have it.

I took a deep breath. _Somewhere the light—_

_“Father?”_

I dropped the gryo’s foil wrapper. I knew that voice. I knew that voice absolutely. It had been small and high when last I heard it, but I remembered. “No,” I whispered.

I felt the Man of Iron judder in the air in shock. “Georgie!” he shouted, sounding horrified. “What the hell are you doing here! Go back to the Harbor!”  We spun midair like a corkscrew.

The park, I realized, sat over the farthest tip of the New York Island. Later, Stark would tell me it was part of Battery Park. Rearing back over the trees was an enormous white and gray serpent. I felt all my muscles lock up in absolute shock.

I would know that serpent anywhere, regardless of his size.

Alive.

He was alive.

Look how great and strong he had grown.

Alive.

Jörmungandr.

“Father?” he asked, again. “Tony—Tony, is that my father?”

My world tilted on its axis. Every dream for revenge I had had for the last fifty years disappeared like morning mist. Revenge mattered not. _My son was alive_.

“Put me down,” I said, hardly a breath. “Please. Please put me down, Stark. Please.” Begging. I didn’t care. Begging, pleading—I would cry if I must; I had the tears. Anything to get to him. I could teleport, I thought wildly. I had the strength. I definitely did. For Jörmungandr? For a living son? I had the strength to move worlds.

“Okay, feeling a little out of my depth,” Stark said, but he drifted us slowly towards Jörmungandr’s great head. It was the only thing stopping me from simply vanishing. “But Georgie—what are you doing here?”

“I got bit,” Jörmungandr told Stark, though his eyes were on me. Great and yellow, pupils so wide they were almost round.

“You got—baby. Baby. We can take care of the bites at sea—you really can’t come into shore.”

“What bit you?” I rasped, still disbelieving. Something had hurt him. My magnificent, _living_ son.

Whatever it was, I would annihilate it.

He leaned forward, nose almost touching my stomach. To his credit, Stark did not seem afraid. “You—” breathed Jörmungandr. “I do know your voice. You’re—I thought—How? How is this possible?”

“I have so many questions,” Stark groaned.

“As have I,” I agreed, a little stronger. “Jörmungandr. What bit you?”

“Only you would name your kid something completely unpronounceable,” Stark muttered into my ear. “If he is your kid. How is he your kid? I mean—just size-wise—”

Jörmungandr made a huffing sound “I was bit by a whole school of cookie cutter sharks,” he told me, eyed wide and sad. “Tony has this stuff that seals the wounds before they can get infected.”

“Uh, yeah, but not if you come into the very funky Hudson, Georgie. It rained yesterday! Do you know what that does to the water quality? Also—school? I thought they didn’t school?”

“The little ones do,” my son said darkly, “Sometimes.”

“What is a cookie cutter shark, and how may I destroy them?” I asked pleasantly. My son wriggled in delight—a sight so distantly familiar and dear that I choked on the welling tears.

“Okay—ah—no. We’re—totally not doing this here. Um… Georgie, we were all ready to go out to meet you—well, me’n Bruce, anyway—”

“You were taking the green beast out to my son?” I screeched. I was ready to rend him.

“Dad _dy_ ,” Jörmungandr said, cutting through my rage like a knife through butter, “Hulk only smashes when he’s angry. Bruce just wants to see the animals in the Hudson River Valley. They were giving me a camera. We were going exploring.”

“…I can’t believe my giant sea serpent just called you daddy,” Stark said in my ear. “Anyway,” he added, louder, “The boat’s all ready. Don’t think we can take Bruce—he has to cool down—but I can take your dad here. I mean, that’s a terrible idea, but I’m going to do it anyway. What do you think? We’ll meet you at the Rivermouth? Only, you gotta get out of the river, sweetheart; the Coast Guard’s going to freak out.”

I knew not what a Coast Guard was, but I swore vengeance upon them if they touched a single scale on my boy’s head.

The emotion was breathtakingly strong. It had been long years since I had seen a child of mine who did not spurn my presence. Who spoke with eloquence. I had never stopped loving them, none of them, not even when Sleipnir kicked his stall, or Fenrir went for my jugular.  I had thought Jörmungandr dead. That he was not felt like a hook had been removed from my heart.

And Tony Stark had been kind to him. Tony Stark was prepared to be kind to _me_.

He jostled me. “What d’you say, Papa? We’re going on a boat and continuing this conversation somewhere that won’t give Georgie parasites, or freak out the entire city.  Sound good?”

Words. I needed words. “Why?” I rasped.

“Because Georgie’s my friend,” he said. He’d flipped open his helmet at some point. His eyes were brown and serious. “And I think you need to do this.”

That didn’t answer my question. “What do you seek to gain?” Nothing. Nothing that I could see. Jörmungandr was my boy – I could turn him against Stark and his little band of morons. There was only loss here.

“Georgie,” Stark repeated, “Is my friend. And that’s it. We good?”

It made no sense, but I abruptly stopped caring. I was tired, still hungry, and I’d just seen my boy for the first time in thousands of years. Whatever scheme or plot or manipulation Stark might throw at me in the future would be worth it for one conversation. I seized the opportunity.

“We’re good,” I said.

“Awesome. One more promise: You can’t hurt the boat captain. No matter what. Or kill him. Mike is the nice man who is going to take you to your son. Clear?”

“Yes,” I said, exhausted.

Stark flipped down his helmet. “Excellent. Georgie, meet you back at the Rivermouth.”


	4. Chapter 4: Jörmungandr

It was the longest wait of my life.

I turned in circles at the surface, sending up great splashes and waves. I dived deep and sang out my heart as the pilot whales had taught me, and then launched myself out of the water in great arcs. The movement stung the wounds on my belly – there must have been sixty of them. It hurt quite a bit, but that felt secondary to what was in my heart.

My father had come to Midgard. I thought he had been lost to me forever. He had been ready to go forth and do battle against the cookie cutter sharks, and for one wild moment I had believed that he could. It was preposterous, of course. Cookie cutters were numerous, disperse and small. Still, the idea was nice.

Mike was a very slow driver. _The slowest._ I felt ready to shed my skin with the frustration of waiting, but sure enough, I heard the engine as it made its way to the ancient place where the river had spilled to the sea, in the days before it was called Hudson.   

I swam up to meet them. Probably too fast, for the boat rocked in my wake. “Father!” I cried. It came out a little garbled; I had not yet lifted my head enough from the water.   

“Jörmungandr, you’ll choke yourself,” he answered, leaning against the side of the boat. He was smiling so wide it looked painful. His eyes shone.

“Will not,” I told him, delighted. “I learned better: look.” I took a great gulp of sea water and spewed it out my nose. Most snakes couldn’t do that.

Tony came to rest beside my father. He chuckled. “Did I know you could do that?”

“I don’t tell you _everything_ ,” I said haughtily, though my laughter probably ruined it. I couldn’t help it. I felt as though I’d swallowed the sun. My father had returned to me.

Tony had brought him back.

I had loved Tony before—all of the Avengers, really, as Tony brought them to meet me, one by one. Even Mike had grown on me, and I on him. It had been long years since I had had friends who weren’t of the ocean. But Tony had won a permanent place in my heart, and he would stay there long beyond his natural life. He’d found my father. He’d brought him back. My _father._

“As well you shouldn’t,” father agreed. “Look how you’ve grown,” he added, soft-voiced.

I was very large. Mostly it was a hindrance, and quite annoying, but my father sounded so proud. It made me proud. “Much bigger than my brothers,” I said.

“Wait—you have brothers?” Tony yelped. “Are they in the ocean too?”

Father looked down, and I felt anxiety roil in my gut. I remembered his cries, that day. “No,” I answered for him. “My grandfather found us—all four of us. He said that my brothers and I were monsters and cast us out of Asgard forever. Only I went to the sea.”

“So you’re also an alien,” Tony sighed. “Great. Okay. Well, really old alien. How long have you been here, anyway?”

I shrugged. I had long since lost track and it had especially become difficult because of the fish disappearing lately – the best way to tell seasons was with migrations, but there were fewer and fewer fish.

“Nigh on two thousand Midgardian years,” father said. “More, on Asgard: our years are shorter.”

Tony whistled. “And where the hell have you been, father-of-the-year?”

In a flash, father had him by the throat. Horrified, I cried for him to stop—and he did, jerking back two steps and releasing Tony to slide against the side of the boat, coughing.

Father gave me a look so lost I felt I could weep. What had happened to him? “Tony doesn’t mean it,” I told him quickly. “He makes jokes. Lots of jokes. Really bad ones, actually.” I smiled at him, as best I could, dropping my lower jaw. “He reminds me of you.”

“I looked for you,” father told me, instead of replying. His voice was low and intense. “I never stopped looking for you. But the ocean on this world is so vast, Jörmungandr, and you were so small. I was so sure you were dead, little one. I’m so sorry—”

It was not my father’s fault, this separation. The blame lay with my grandfather. That was where this rage belonged. Odin Spear-shaker was a coward. Look how he had wounded my dear father. How he had wounded me.  “I nearly was,” I said. “Many times. The orcas are cruel when they can be, and the Humboldt squid are always hungry. But then I grew. And now they run from _me_.”

Father smiled. “That’s my boy,” he whispered.

“You should see the shit he chases into our nets,” Tony said, just as proud. He’d stood up again from where he’d slumped against the side of the boat. “We got like three new species, just from him.” He rubbed his neck. “Listen, you do that again, I’m pulling the plug,” he added to my father. “I mean it. As soon as we get back to the city there’s going to be hell to pay for both of us. Now, I’m sticking with you for Georgie’s sake, but you keep trying to fight me, and that’s not okay. Clear?”

I didn’t want that. “Please don’t hurt Tony again,” I said. “He’s my friend.” But there was someone missing. “Where’s Mike?”

“Mike is terrified of your father, and will not leave the cabin,” Tony said, articulating his words in the way he did when he was angry and being sarcastic about it. “There’s some stuff we’re going to have to talk about, but not right now.”

Father bristled. “Stuff,” he said darkly.

Bad stuff. Whatever it was that brewed in the air between father and Tony; I could feel it. I was curious, but I was starving for my father more, so I changed the subject.

“I still have those bites,” I said tentatively. “Did you bring your potion, Tony?”

“Liquid bandage? Yeah. Let’s see.”

I lifted a loop of myself out of the water. The damned sharks had left great gouges, so many that I’d lost count. There had been quite a lot of them. Father hissed in sympathy.

“My darling, these look painful,” he murmured. “This is from these cookie cutter sharks?” Very gently, he reached out and touched the space between two bites.

I nodded. “I hate them. Usually it’s just one or two, but—there were so many.”

“Alright, Georgie,” Tony sighed. He was holding two bottles. “Here’s the deal. Normally, I’m all about the liquid bandaid and done, but it literally rained yesterday, so there’s all kinds of weird shit in the Hudson right now. Brucie would say you’re at risk for infection. I got this stuff, but it’s going to sting like a motherfucker.” He shook the second bottle.

The disinfectant did sting. Bruce had used it once or twice. I shrank back a little.

“Or I could just heal you,” father murmured. He quirked an eyebrow.

“Are you fucking kidding me,” Tony said.

“But you’re not a healer,” I said. I remember father telling me that, distinctly, many times. Sleipnir had had a bad habit of stepping on me.

“No, I’m not,” father agreed. “But this is a very simple one, and I’ve learned a few things in the last thousand years.” He smiled.

I inched over. “Alright.”

His smile widened. Carefully, he rested a hand just above one of my wounds. It itched a great deal, like the healing sped forward, but the gouge closed. He moved on to the next, and then the next, but each healing got progressively slower, and the sweat was starting to stand out on his brow.

I looked at him then. Really looked. My child’s eyes saw only my father, and the delight and joy at seeing him once more had warmed me so that I was blinded, as the sun blinds. I adjusted and saw the man.

Smaller, of course, because I had grown. Still majestic, but—tired. He was not elderly, but he was also clearly exhausted in ways he had not been when I was a child. His complexion was waxy pale, his eyes haunted and ringed with shadows. There was a slash on his tunic, blood-stained at the edges, though there was no wound beneath. His gentle hands were scarred, and the calluses caught between my scales. His hair was long, as in my memory, but not as well groomed. Something terrible had happened to him in my absence, I realized. Something had gone horribly wrong.

It was strange to see that in my father, who in my memory towered like a giant, invincible.  

I pulled away. “That’s alright, father,” I said softly.

“Jörmungandr—”

“You’re exhausted,” I said. “You are, aren’t you? I can see the rings under your eyes. Tony can do the rest. His potions really work.”

Tony was frowning. “Exhausted? Seriously?”

Father scowled. “Let’s see your potions, then, Stark,” he snapped instead of answering.

Tony hmmed. “You know what? Fuck the antiseptic. Georgie, can you do the deep dive thing? The pressure change works just as well, really.”

I much preferred the deep dive thing. “I’ll jump over the boat!” I told him, and before my father could ask, I arrowed down.

The continental shelf is not far from the Rivermouth—at least, not if you are a fast swimmer like me. I swam down and down so my ears popped, so fast that, had I been a mammal, I would have caught the bends and died a slow, painful death. But I was not a mammal: I was Asgardian, and I had some of my father’s magic to me. Down I plunged, into the edges of the midnight of the ocean, what Bruce called _bathypelagic._ I could have gone farther, but after that the light cut out entirely, and I couldn’t echolocate like the whales. Instead I turned and started my trek upward.

And promptly got bitten by another damned cookie cutter shark.

Snarling with pain, I arrowed up and hit the ocean surface, leaping as high as I could. I did it once, twice, three times, so my back curled in humps above the water, then arrowed again back to the boat, and I leaped again. I heard my father laughing in delight as I soared over the boat, and I was careful not to collapse onto them.

Mike would never forgive me if I hurt his _Rose_.

“Hey, c’mere, show off!” Tony called back. “Let’s get a look at your bites!”

“I got bit by another one!” I told him indignantly. “Look at this!” I held out the bottom of my tail, where it had got me.

My father growled.

“Ouch, fuck that looks painful,” Tony said. “Give it here, we’ll get it patched. Loki, pass me those towels, yeah? Shit needs to be dry.”

Tony did his work, stemming the blood and then spraying the wound. I also knew that it had to be dry, so I waited for the liquid to solidify. My father watched intently, and then held out a hand.

“You have more than one bottle, I presume?” he drawled. Tony waved at his pack.

Between the two of them they bandaged the ridiculous number of bites. My father sighed over each one, petting my scales in sympathy. “This is—many beasts,” he said, slowly, a question. On Asgard, I remembered, there were single beasts with many heads who could do something similar.

“Yes,” I said. “They’re barely the size of your forearm, and they’re fast. One bite, and they swim away.”

“Cookie cutters,” Tony said, spraying, “Also called cigar sharks. Clever life history, but fuck those guys, right, Georgie?”

I sighed. “It’s because the big fish are disappearing,” I said.

My father stilled.

“How so?” Tony asked. He’d moved on to the next one.

“Less big prey,” I told him. “Now they have to go after seals and small sharks. I’m probably the first big thing they’ve seen in months.”

“Thought you said there’s whales here?”

“I haven’t seen one or heard one. It’s not the migration season, but—”

“Jörmungandr,” my father’s voice was grave. “If there are no large fish, what have you been eating?”

“Tony commissioned this boat,” I told him, “Lately I’ve been eating lots of small fish caught in a net, but normally I like the big whale sharks, or the basking sharks. I haven’t seen a basking shark in ages.” The sorrow must have bled through to my voice, for Tony patted my side comfortingly.

My father rubbed my scales gently. “Stark, I believe I owe you a debt,” he said. “For taking care of my son. But now I have information for you. For both of you. I know where your fish are going, my sweet. They nearly devoured me, too.”

My head snapped up, and I know Tony’s did, too. “It’s overfishing,” Tony said. “People are fishing too much.”

“Likely so,” my father agreed, spraying another bite. “But it is also aliens. Red ones. Their queen ate my jerkin.”

“Their queen ate your— _what?_ ”

“It is not the Midgardians?” I breathed, meeting my father’s eyes.

He could probably see the hope on my face. “No, my darling. Not entirely.” He reached up and patted my nose. I pretended to bite him, an old game, and he chuckled.

Not the Midgardians. Not the Midgardians. The relief was like cool water on a sunburn from too long basking. I had not realized how much it had been paining me until I felt the relief, for I couldn’t bear to blame Tony and his friends for the emptiness of the ocean. It was such a relief to know that was not so. “Then I can hunt them,” I said, slowly. “If they are aliens, I can hunt them.”

“They will want to hunt you,” my father said gravely. “They wish to feed their queen. I do not know why.” He frowned. “They sang of their queen bearing again.”  

“Bearing young, you think?” Tony asked. “Laying eggs? Taking over?”

I hissed. Over my dead body!

“It is a possibility,” my father said. “Jörmungandr, I can take you from this world—”

“To where, father?” I asked, a little bitterly. “To Asgard? Where Thor will chop off my head?”

Father growled.

“Um,” Tony said, “Okay, not sure how we jumped from aliens to here but why is Thor chopping off your head?”

“There was a prophesy,” my father snapped, and that was all he seemed inclined to say. For the best, really. I didn’t like to think about my uncle. “These aliens, if indeed that is what they are, will want you to feed their queen, my darling. They are taking the largest creatures they can find on this world, and you are surely one of them.”

“Then we will fight them, won’t we, father?” I bared my fangs at him. The venom dripped and steamed into the water.

My father only looked at me sadly. “You never wished to fight before,” he said.

“No. But now I have something to fight for,” I replied, and it was true. I had my ocean, which I loved despite the cookie cutter sharks. And I had Tony, and the Avengers. And now, like the cream cheese and lox on the bagels Clint brought for me, I had my father back, after centuries. Oh, I would fight for those things with my dying breath.

“Avengers Assemble,” Tony drawled. “Plus one giant snake and one Loki. Oh, this is going to be _interesting_.”


	5. Chapter 5: Tony

“Are you fucking kidding me,” Clint said.

I mean. He wasn’t wrong. That was basically what I thought, too. I cast my eyes to Pepper, who looked mutinous.

I probably should have told her. She was telling me that with her eyes, but _come on,_ giant sea serpent! Pepper didn’t like snakes _and_ she got seasick. Both of those things meant disapproval. So sue me for not wanting to tell her in the first place. I was so sure she hadn’t wanted to know.  Now, she gazed at me with banked rage through the computer screen. She was in San Francisco for a business meeting.

Steve had called her because he was a traitor.

Loki had fucked off with Georgie at the end of the day. Apparently he could shape shift, which was like the biggest screw you to the laws of physics, chemistry, biology, and, like, _logic_ , but I guessed that was Loki’s style: go big or go home.

I could respect a style like that, except when it fucked me over like this. “I really, really wish I was kidding you, Clinton,” I said. “I really do. But apparently aliens are eating all the fish.”

“No, see, that’s not the part that bothers me,” Clint said, and I think we all had a brief moment of reflection about how terrible it was that the aliens were not the worst part of this scenario. How had my life come to this? “The part that bothers me is that _you took Loki on a fun little sea voyage_ instead of _locking his ass up_.”

“He’s Georgie’s dad,” I said, and even I knew that was shit. It was just a shit reason; Loki tried to take over New York and he belonged in a tiny cell.

But his _eyes_ when he’d seen Georgie. No one could fake that. Hell, if Howard had looked at me with _half_ that much feeling—best not to finish that thought.

“Even serial killers can have children, Tony,” Bruce said and, wow, talk about betrayal. “It doesn’t make them any less dangerous.”

“That is also,” Pepper drawled, and I winced, because she sounded like she was contemplating eating both my balls and my eyeballs, and I had absolutely no doubt that she could do that from San Francisco. Pepper was scary when she was angry, “exactly the sort of reason that you should not have _befriended a sea serpent_ in the first place.”

“Well, no, I’ll vouch for Georgie,” Clint said and then flinched from the glare he got. Pepper’s wrath was formidable.  

“Me too,” Tasha added, and huh, Clint was right. She was not afraid of Pepper. That was something else. Everyone was afraid of Pepper. In a deathmatch, I wondered, who would win? Money’s on Widow, but Pepper’s will would somehow fuck her over in the end. Does that count as winning?

Also, dead Pepper: not a good thought. Made my stomach feel cold with panic. Pepper was important in ways even beyond the romantic, because that was only on again, off again. Besides that, though, I needed her like Georgie needed his ocean. Pepper kept me sane. Pepper was home, even if she was all the way in San Francisco and threatening to eat all my balls.

“But you’ve just left him with an enemy, Stark.” Natasha was still talking. The way she said Stark sounded like _you idiot._

I snapped back into the conversation. “Loki’s not going to hurt his kid. You didn’t see his face—”

“And when he turns your friend against you?” Her eyes were very serious. “I like Georgie just as much as you do, but the fact of the matter is that he is very naive and leaving him with Loki was like leaving a lamb with a very hungry wolf.”

I sank in my seat. “Actually, I think the wolf is his brother,” I muttered, feeling like an idiot. Not a feeling I liked.  

“Tony,” Steve said gently, and I hated it when he used his gentle voice. “What would you have us do? You know we can’t trust Loki. And we know that George still loves his father.”

“This changes the game for Loki,” I said, and I really wasn’t sure why these words were coming out of my mouth, because seriously? Loki? Fuck that guy. He threw me out a window once.

But he had looked ready to cry at the sight of my buddy, and Georgie had been nearly breathless with joy. I couldn’t deny that. It would be cruel. “Loki doesn’t give a shit about us. He gives a shit about Georgie, okay. You could see it in his eyes. In this case, Loki’s going after those aliens. We can be on board, or we can sit back and let it happen.”

“Votes to sit back,” Clint said, raising his hand.

Man, fuck him. I glared. “You can sit back,” I told him, surprised by the ferocity of the words myself, “But Avengers or not, I’m going out there.”

“I also vote to go out there,” Natasha said mildly. “If only to keep an eye on things.” She arched an eyebrow at Pepper, who scowled but said nothing.

“Natasha’s right,” Steve added. “If things go south, then these aliens become our problem. We should do what we can to be sure that doesn’t happen—or at least know about it, if it does happen.”

“Well you know what? Fuck everything. I like Georgie, okay, I like him a lot but this is a line. No. I’m not getting anywhere near Loki. Hard pass. I’m sitting this one out.” Clint crossed his arms and glared. One of his clenched fists was shaking, which said a lot—Barton had steady hands in the face of everything. Everything but Loki, apparently.

Cap considered. “You want to play ground control, at least?”

Clint thought about it. Finally, he nodded.

“I don’t think I can guarantee the other guy won’t go after Loki,” Bruce said slowly in the silence. “Or Georgie, frankly.”

Oh, not this again. “The other guy won’t go after Georgie, buddy,” I told him. “Georgie’s never so much as spat at you before.”

Bruce gave me a half grin. “And Loki?”

“We can point you at other things to smash. As back up.” I smiled at him winningly.

“This is the worst of all possible bad ideas,” Bruce muttered.

“Of course it is,” I said brightly. “It’s my idea. My ideas are all terrible.”


	6. Chapter 6: Loki

My son was an excellent swimmer.

Stark left me in the ocean. Jörmungandr called a shark to the side of the boat so that I could see it—he called it a mako shark, the fastest creature in the sea. I took the form after studying it; the creature even leaped from the waves, after my son asked. It was a lovely form, sleek and dangerous, but the transformation was tiring, and at the end I wanted to hang limp—and then found that I could not breathe. I felt on the verge of panic when my son called to me.

 _Come, father,_ he said, _you must move._

Swimming felt laborious at first—I was terribly tired and forcing myself forward while having no breath to sustain me was counter intuitive. But Jörmungandr swam sinuously beside me, and at the first swing of my tail a rush of water whispered over my gills, and the frightening grayness of the world receded just a little.

My son led me to the open sea. The sounds and vibrations from the distant city and her vessels grew quieter. My form was fast, but we moved slowly, slowly enough that I felt a lull in my mind—relaxing.

 _Jörmungandr,_ I said, drowsy, _what is this?_

 _This is the way a shark may rest,_ he said, and his eyes glinted with good humor. Whole, hale, and well. A miracle. _And also this way we may speak while you recover._

My clever boy. _It is well done,_ I said.

He wriggled, pleased with the praise and so like the child he had been – possibly still was; who knew how long it would take him to truly mature – that my heart twisted.

 _Tell me of your adventures,_ I said after a moment of swimming. _I had searched so long for you; where have you been?_

 _I’ve been everywhere,_ he said, surprisingly enthusiastic. _Down to the deep and leaping up to the sky. I fled the Humboldt squid, and then I fought them, and then I ate them. Now they fear me. I sang with the shearwaters, and raced the sailfish, and found the prettiest nudibranchs out in reefs, and directed dying eels to the Sargasso Sea. I laughed myself sick at the sight of a mola mola, and then ate him. I learned not to eat the sperm whales, for their teeth are sharp and they are fierce warriors. The ocean is great and vast, father, and if I live ten thousand more years I will never see all of it._

_And I have missed you terribly._

My heart caught in my throat. _I have missed you terribly as well, my sweet,_ I managed.  

 _Where have you been, father? What has happened to you? Where are my brothers?_ His great yellow eyes met mine, pupils blown wide. He always was perceptive.

 _It has been—very bad,_ I told him honestly. It was the first time I had ever really admitted it. _Losing you and your brothers was just the start. I fell from the Rainbow Bridge, and into darkness, and into madness._

His eyes, if possible, widened further, but I continued before he could ask.

 _Your brother Sleipnir is enslaved to Odin._ I couldn’t quite keep the fury out of my voice. _He wears a bit, and he has lost his words. He is Odin’s mighty warhorse but he is little else. He remembers that I am his father, but his rage is such that I cannot visit. I fear he is mad._

_Your other brother Fenrir has long passed madness and entered monstrosity. He is bound and chained at the top of a mountain, and left there for carrion. He howled and howled at the start of his imprisonment; I searched for him, calling out. But Tyr found him first, and thrust a sword through his jaw. It is enchanted. I cannot remove it. Fenrir grows and grows. I found him in time, but he snarls when I come near. He is a beast in truth. There is naught but madness in his eyes. It frightens me. The prophesy is that he will devour first Odin, and then the world; to release him now would be to fulfill it. He is lost to me._

It had been many long years since I had spoken of my sons to anyone. On Asgard, there was a polite fiction that I had no children, that I was merely a prince as my brother was a prince, and had never produced heirs. I hated that fiction with everything I had, though I had smiled through it, all gritted teeth. It had become a lie so widely and deeply accepted it could almost be a truth—the only child I had access to was Sleipnir, after all, and he disdained my presence. The other was mad, and the last I thought dead. To speak now—it felt like opening a wound, but also like lysing a boil. The pus oozed out, and I felt not better but—a little lighter. Jörmungandr was alive, after all. It felt like breathing easy again, after long years living in smog.

 _To us,_ Jörmungandr replied quietly. _He is lost to us._ He looked away, out into the blueness of the deep. I saw him swallow, and shiver with the shock of it, of the truth of his brothers.

I wanted to weep, for the telling of the tale, but also for the sight of his sorrow. He had loved his brothers. Aside from myself, there was so one else who had loved them so. This burden was no longer mine to bear alone: my son well and truly understood, as no one else had. _I am so glad to see you,_ I told him, meaning it with all my heart.

 _And I you, father._ He hesitated, clearly stealing himself. _What of my prophesy?_

I chuckled darkly—well, it translated into gnashing of the vicious teeth in my jaws, but it was to the same effect. _Why do you think,_ I said, _I taught you to never bite your tail? You are not an ouroboros. You are Jörmungandr. You make your own destiny, Norns or no Norns._

He clicked his jaws together, audible in the sea. _But what of Prince Thor?_

 _Prince Thor can bite me,_ I said, and he laughed hard enough to inhale water and choke. At my concern, he dipped his head up above the waves to cackle.

 _Father!_ He scolded, giggling. It made me feel warm with affection. I swam around his great neck, slow and lazy as he had taught me, still resting.

 _It is possible that I have had not one but several falling outs with my brother,_ I said, wry, and he was laughing again.

“You know, I thought that might happen,” he said from above the waves, his voice carrying. He got a hold of himself. “There’s something else.”

Yes. Yes there was. I sighed through my gills. _Odin is a liar,_ I said.

 _And a coward,_ added Jörmungandr, diving back down to swim beside me.

I couldn’t do it.  I had the words, but they wouldn’t come: how I was no son of Odin, how I was a stolen relic, a pawn, a plaything for the great prince. How Jörmungandr and his bothers had monstrous appearances not only because of their mother but also because of _me_ , a Jotun, and my monstrous nature. That should have been my first clue—

Angrboða had sung such sweet songs. Her hands had been soft, her eyes clever and amused. She’d led me deep into the forest, as was her peoples’ wont, but instead of slaying me she had simply shown me the wonders of the wilds. She had been incredible. Feral and kind at the same time. She’d seen me, when no one else had. A mess of contradictions. I had loved her, even though I knew she would break my heart.

I hadn’t been wrong. 

 _Come, father, look at this,_ Jörmungandr said, sensing my hesitation.

We were well and truly out in the open sea now. The land was entirely gone from the horizon, but my son clearly knew where we were. He led me at a quicker pace—not enough to break me from my rest, but still at a better speed. In the distance, something came into view.

It was hazy and large, moving, glinting. Beside me, something dashed, buffeting me in its wake: a fish with a great sword on its nose. I goggled. We had no such thing on Asgard.

 _Marlin,_ my son said, all smiles. _That’s a marlin. I’m a friend to the marlins. Ahoy there!_

 _No time, Yorick, they’ll be gone!_ called the fish. Its tail cleats cast ripples that I could feel against my nose as it darted away.

_Yorick?_

_No one on Midgard can pronounce my name, father,_ Jörmungandr said dryly. _This is clearly your fault. The marlin all know of me, and they call me Yorick. I have no idea why._

_That’s very rude._

_I’ve grown used to it. He’s right, though. They’ll be gone if we don’t hurry. Can I break you out of your rest? You’ll get a meal out of it._

I could use more food. And the rest had helped. _Very well. What meal?_

 _Follow me!_ and he picked up speed.

My mind went from half dreaming to full conscious like the flick of a switch. I raced to catch up, and then soon outstripped my son, for the body he had given me was powerful indeed, and the rest had done me good. He only laughed and called me to go faster: the hazy thing in the distance revealed itself.

Small fish cast silver sparkles, and they swam in tight circles, harried there by three dolphins, clicking and whirring below them. I had seen dolphins before, and spoken with them, many years ago. More of the bladed fish swam about, and something large darted near: another shark, nearly twice my size, that Jörmungandr swallowed whole.

 _White sharks aren’t my favorite,_ he told me, _but they’ll do. Eat some of the menhaden, father—nothing here will be foolish enough to attack a mako shark._

I heeded the advice; calling to the dolphins as the bladed fish did, I swam through their carefully herded swarm with open jaws, at full speed. The small fish called menhaden were indeed delicious: I ate several of them before tiring, and then, shortly, the others had eaten the rest: the bladed fish, the dolphins, the other mako sharks, who appeared from the shadowy blue surrounding us all. My son ate the white sharks that appeared, except for the small ones. The experience was nothing short of spectacular.

 _Baitball,_ Jörmungandr said cheerfully as we glided away, only silver scales left to sink slowly, like dying stars.  _Good hunting for everyone, except perhaps the menhaden._

 _The ocean is truly yours,_ I said with wonder, falling back into that half dreaming state as we swam slowly. The sun was setting, the ocean darkening.

 _Yes,_ Jörmungandr said proudly. _But all the better that you’re in it now, too. I am glad of your presence, always. Shall I show you more of its wonders while you rest? The best is yet to come. Wait til you see what comes up from the deep at sundown!_

His enthusiasm was infectious. I let him lead me, slowly, through the night, as the ocean darkened to black and Jörmungandr became little more than a shadow at my side. But then it began—little whispers of light, pinpricks in the deep, and suddenly the sea was alight with stars.

 _The glowing fish from below come up at night,_ he told me. _Look how they make the ocean shine._

They did make the ocean shine, the way the stars made the emptiness of space shine. But while the stars filled me with dread in memory of my terrible fall, these creatures only hung there, and they brushed against my skin as I passed them—harmless. I had my boy at my side and the shining sea all around me. All I felt was peace.

Thor adored Midgard for its people and its cultures and its pop tarts. I had hated its oceans long before Thor had become so enamored, for stealing my son, and then later I was filled with rage at my brother and so had spurned the lands of Midgard, too. I had torn it up with stolen Chitauri drones and had cursed its people with the terrible Mind Stone, that felt like poison behind my eyes. Midgard as a whole had no love from me, but as Jörmungandr showed me his ocean’s wonders with such obvious affection, I felt myself softening. My boy had a life all his own here. Clearly he harbored no ill will—perhaps it was time for me to forgive Midgard’s oceans, too.

And so we passed the night, my son and I, cruising slowly through the sea. He showed me schools of squid and jellies that glowed, and when I casted sparks of magic, moving shapes darted to it, briefly illuminated: fishes of all kinds, even the bladed ones. Incredible. 

But as the sun rose, Jörmungandr took me back to what he called the Rivermouth, where he met with Tony Stark once every two weeks.

 _He’ll be there,_ he said, absolutely certain, _and he’ll have reached consensus with his Avengers._

That was what I was afraid of, but in the worst case, I could sink their boat and slaughter them. I had a distinct advantage in the water. They would have to swim, after all, and I bore the body of a shark. My teeth alone were formidable, never mind my magic. Midgard’s oceans were looking more and more promising.

Sure enough, the little boat waited as we approached. Tony Stark, armored, was leaning over the side and eating a sandwich. Beside him was Bruce Banner in a swimsuit. A fist of ice clenched in my stomach. I was unsure whether I was enraged that the beast was so close to my son, or panicked.

But Jörmungandr showed no fear. He snorted in surprise beside me and raised his head above the water. His next breath casted rainbows.

“Bruce!” he said, all delight. It was—surprising. Surely Banner was a threat? The Avengers were reminding me of their strength and my defeat, by sending Banner. But my boy didn’t seem to think so.

“Hello Georgie,” Banner said lightly.

“Yeah, hi, what the hell am I, chopped liver?” Tony Stark said, in that rambling breathless way he had.

Jörmungandr lowered his head back into the water and then flicked it, very carefully, sending a small, controlled splash to Stark.  “Hello Tony,” he said, a grin in his voice, as Stark spluttered and glared at his now-soggy food. 

“Ugh, I was eating that sandwich!” he complained, and tossed it. To my surprise Jörmungandr ducked his head and caught it on his tongue. 

“Salami,” he said, licking his lips. Presumably that was what had been in the sandwich. What was a salami?

“You are a conniving thief. Your innocent face isn’t fooling anyone. You just wanted my sandwich.” Stark brushed water droplets off his shining red suit, bristling with mock-indigence. 

“Tony. He is a five-hundred-foot sea serpent. His face is not innocent,” Banner said. I was ready to rage at him except that he was grinning, and he winked at my son, who chuffed at him.

Friends, I realized. They were genuinely friends. This was banter, similar to that shared amongst Thor’s Warriors Three. Jörmungandr had made real friends, a feat at which I had always failed. And with Thor’s Avengers, no less! _How had he done that?_

It was a good thing Thor was on Asgard, I realized with slow dawning horror, and that I had gotten here first. What would have happened if idiot Tony Stark had innocently brought Thor to meet his new serpent shaped companion?

Death. Thor would have killed him. My son would be dead in truth. I sidled up to one of his great coils, not liking the thought.

 _Father, if you transform back, you can sit on my nose,_ my son offered.

I did not want to change back. I liked the mako shark form. It was fast, sleek, and I didn’t have to talk to any Avengers. But nothing would get accomplished if that happened, so I sighed through my gills one last time, and turned around.

_Father?_

The transformation was simple. I swam down a little, and then arrowed toward the sky at full speed, thrusting my body above the waves in a powerful splash. Just before I began to descend I transformed again: a falcon, mid-flight. It was a familiar form. I turned on a wingtip, and saw Jörmungandr wriggling with delight at the transformation, and the two mortals gaping.

“That was well done, father!” he said as I landed on his nose and transformed again, this time back into myself. My Asgardian self, anyway.

I brushed some salt off my clothes. “Barely more than a parlor trick.”

Stark and Banner had both tensed visibly, but Banner cocked his head after a moment, curious. “You know,” he said slowly, “I don’t think we’ve ever actually spoken, Loki.”

“Your green beast and I are rather well acquainted; I assumed that was why you were here,” I said acidly.  Jörmungandr shifted under me, confused. I patted him.

“Yes and no,” Banner said. “I’m also curious. And Georgie’s a friend.” He smiled at my son.

“I don’t understand,” Jörmungandr said plaintively.

“Probably best if it comes from you,” Banner told me, holding up a hand to Stark. “Because Tony’s not very good at tact, and I—am likely to get angry.” He gave a tense smile.

Let’s avoid that, I thought, and then turned to look into my son’s guileless, golden eyes. Guilt suffused me. I should have told him over the night.

Oh, but it had been so pleasant to swim through the shining sea and pretend that the world was filled once more with endless possibility.

I leaned down and rested a palm on the upper portion of his nose, just in front of his eyes. _My sweet, it is easier and faster to tell you this way. I wish for them not to hear, for they were there, and they will be angry. Is this alright?_

 _Yes. This is that_ stuff _Tony spoke of before._

 _Yes._ I sighed. _I told you I fell from the rainbow bridge. The reason is—complicated. I will tell you that story later; forgive me, my son, for it is a difficult story for me, and will be just as hard for you. The short version is thus: Odin is not my father. I was stolen._ I braced myself.

Jörmungandr did not disappoint: he jerked back. But he had no disgust in him, and no horror. On the contrary, he cried, _Then he is not my grandfather!_ The vicious joy there was unmistakable. This reaction, so unlike mine, made my gut roil with confusion.

 _I—yes,_ I managed. _There is more to the story but—_

 _\--but it is not relevant to now. Now, you fell from the bridge,_ he said, and bade me to continue with his eyes.

  _Yes,_ I said, not sure if I was relieved to be through Odin’s treachery or dreading what came next. _I fell for—I know not how long. I landed in a terrible place—_

The silent communication meant that I could say Thanos’ name without bringing his wrath down upon me. It was still difficult to force the thought out, and I had to impress upon my son to never speak it aloud. I could feel his horror mounting, so I quickened my explanation: the deal, the Tesseract, New York, the Hulk, Asgard. Slipping my chains. My faked death.

I did not lie to him. He was my son. I never could, and especially not now, not after Odin had lied to me so grievously.

And when I finished, to my shock, he swung his great head around and glared at Stark. “And you never asked him!” he cried.

I steadied myself on his nose, and exchanged a baffled look with Stark. “What?” Stark asked.

“You never asked him _why_ he wanted the Tesseract!”

“That was fast,” Stark muttered, but Banner spoke over him.

“George, we all just assumed world dominion,” he said gently. “That was what he was talking about, to anyone who would listen.”

“Nobody actually wants _world dominion_ , Bruce,” Jörmungandr said, as if to a small child, “What would my father even do with Midgard? Have you ever seen a king’s day job? It is boring!”

Stark opened his mouth. He closed his mouth. And I could contain it no longer.

I fell back against Jörmungandr’s face and cackled. Peals of shocked, elated laughter at my darling son’s unexpected loyalty, at the Avengers’ confusion. My love for him swelled almost to bursting, and I let him feel it.

“What—I mean—then what the actual—what the fuck did he want with the Tesseract?” Stark spluttered and I howled.

“Jor—” I gasped, “Darling—my s-sweet, you are f-forgetting my propensity to lie,” I managed, and hiccoughed another laugh.  “I am the greatest liar in all of Asgard. It is part of my godhood.”

“My godhood is to start the end of the world,” my son said crossly, “and I refuse. You have never lied to me. We are more than what we are made to be.”

I sighed, my amusement fading. He should not have told the Avengers that.

But everything he said was true. “Don’t let Thor catch you saying that,” I said dryly.

“Which part?”

“Every part. You will pry the lightning out of his cold, dead hands.”

He snorted derisively. “No, I will not. I was just saying that. I will not fight Thor.”

“Uh, hold on, question!” Stark, waving his hand in the air for some reason.

“What,” I snapped.

“Georgie Vs. Thor, round 1 – supposedly brings about the _end_ of the world?” Stark demanded, sounding alarmed.

“I will not fight him!” Jörmungandr said hotly.

“Okay, two things,” Banner said, surprisingly fierce, before I could break in. “One: it’s important that we know so that we do not bring Thor to you. Two: you are right. You are more than you are made to be. Your choice matters. And thank you.”

I blinked at him. “You surprise me, Banner,” I said.

“I know a little something about monsters, Loki,” he replied easily.

“Jörmungandr is not a monster,” I snapped. He wasn’t. He was—kind and good and loyal, and sweet like a child. 

“Yes, I am,” my son sighed. “My lying coward not-grandfather said so.”

“Say that again,” Stark said, all smiles suddenly. “But slowly.”

My heart caught in my chest. Oh. _Oh._

Stark was a genius. I took back all my previous derision. He was a damned genius. He was right.

“My lying—oh.”

And me too, I thought. He was right about me too. My lying father taught me that the Jotun were repulsive beasts. When had I seen the Jotun? Ten times, if that, all in combat? A lie. All a lie. Who knew what they were really like?

_Maybe they were like me._

Jörmungandr, I realized in surprise, had excellent taste in friends. Never mind that Thor called them shield brothers: he did not choose them. Jörmungandr _chose them._  

Who wanted a kingship, indeed. I was going to save the oceans for my boy, and then swim with him til I couldn’t bear to be cold-blooded anymore.

“Monstrousness all depends on who you ask, anyway,” Banner said wisely, with a half smile, as if he could read my thoughts. “But that aside, I’m assuming you’re up to speed, Georgie?”

“Father invaded New York under duress, and now you all hate him, but you don’t hate me. Yes. I am up to speed.”

Stark pointed at me. “We will get back to the duress part because I am _very_ curious about that, but more importantly, we have aliens to kick off our world.”

“Yes,” I murmured leaning forward, elbow on my knee and hand on my fist, “What was your little consensus?”

“They’re eating our fish. We want them off the planet. Right now, they’re doing more harm than you are. We’re with you. Barton’s sitting this one out, though.” Stark shrugged.

Jörmungandr shifted under me.

 _The Mind Stone must have done terrible things to him,_ he said silently. _You did not quite know how to wield it. There must be scars._

_If there are, I know not how to heal them. That is a quest for another day._

_I’ll remember that, father,_ he said, like it was a threat. Doubtless he really would remember and push me to a quest to fix Barton’s fractured mind. How did anyone even take a five-hundred-foot serpent on a quest, anyway? I supposed I would find out.

“What do we do now?” my son asked.

“We ask Loki here for some coordinates,” Stark said, standing straighter. “And we suit up.”

“You’re already wearing your suit,” he said, clearly confused. He was—adorable. I wanted to squeeze him.

“He means prepare for battle, my sweet,” I said.

“Oh.” He sighed. “Do we have to fight them? Can’t we just ask them to leave?”

I was about to tell him that it was not Asgard’s way, but then—we were not on Asgard. I raised an eyebrow at Stark, since he seemed to be running this particular freakshow. Who knew how they did it on Midgard? 

Sure enough, Stark said, “We’ll send the Widow in advance guard. She’ll report back. If they can be asked to leave, she’ll ask them. Okay?”

This seemed to satisfy Jörmungandr. “Natasha will know.”

I knew of the Widow from Barton’s mind, but in a faded way. The memories were not mine, after all, and without the connection they became tattered and colorless. My true memories of the Widow came from the time in the cage, where she tricked me. She was diminutive and clever and that made her formidable indeed. I wondered how my son had befriended her. How he had befriended all of them.

“Good. Coordinates?” Stark raised an eyebrow right back to me.

Well, shit. I had the coordinates, but in the Asgardian system—moreover, they were coordinates for a mage, not a cartographer. How did Midgardians even measure location on their planet, anyway? Surely our systems were different. I could bring them there, but that wasn’t going to go over well.

Illusion. It would have to be an illusion. They knew what their world looked like—hopefully—and could go from there. I snapped my fingers.


	7. Chapter 7: Jörmungandr

They all seemed both annoyed and excited about father’s illusion. Tony complained loudly, “What the fuck am I supposed to even do with that?”

To which my father snapped, “Language!” as though I were still a snakelet. I bobbed my head to make him lose his balance in retaliation. He didn’t quite fall, but he slipped with a little yelp.  When he glared at me, I chuckled. “Brat,” he muttered.

“Anyway, this fuckery aside, I have some stuff for you,” Tony said.

“Stuff?” I asked.

“Yeah, come here.” He beckoned.

I leaned down and forward. My father stood and made his way to sit between my eyes instead of on my nose, as far away from the Avenger as he could get.

Tony held up something very small. “This is what we call a communicator,” he said. “Look—” he fished a similar looking piece out of his own ear, and then put it back. “Lets us talk to you over distance. It has a certain range, and yours is going to be more limited—these things don’t transmit well under water. Has to do with the media change—water to air and back. But it’s better than nothing. I’m going to give you a little antenna, too, if you’ll let me.”

I thought about it and nodded. On my head, my father huffed with the movement, which amused me.

“Awesome. Need your ear, buddy,” Tony said, and I turned my head obligingly.

My ears were serpent’s ears, without cartilage or even an opening. Tony seemed to know what he was doing though. He warned me quietly along the way and told me emphatically to speak if he hurt me. When I agreed, he very carefully picked a small hole in one of the scales above my inner ear. He attached the little device. “Alright?”

It didn’t hurt. “Yes.”

“Great. Steve, can you do a check?”

_“Check-check one. Can you hear me, Georgie?”_

I wriggled. “Hi Steve! Are you on land?”

Steve chuckled. _“Yeah, Avengers headquarters. Mike says your, uh, dad gave them coordinates for these aliens?”_

“Yes, and he also told my why you’re all displeased with him. I’m upset at all of you.”

And I was, too. My father, for trashing New York, though he could not be blamed for fleeing so terrible a foe. The Avengers, my friends, for not using a single brain between them, and not figuring out that my father was lying.

They all had brains. I knew they did. Especially Tony.

I was livid at this Thanos. Woe betide him, should he ever come to Earth. I would _devour him._

Steve sighed. _“Yeah, I imagine you are. You’re—I mean—”_

“I’m not going to turn on you, if that’s what you’re asking. I don’t turn on my friends.”

“That’s good to hear,” Tony said, grinning. On my head, my father huffed, but he petted me behind my eye.

_You are too sweet natured for your own good,_ he told me, but gently. _It’s going to get you hurt one day. How did you develop such a trait?_ I _am your father and look at what Odin did to you. How can you be this trusting?_

_So long alone in the seas, father,_ I replied, just as kind, _how could I not be?_

“Now the thing is that’s gonna stop working as soon as you get more than like three feet underwater,” Tony continued. “So I have to give you a kind of stupid antenna. I know, I’m pissed off about it, give me like a month and I’ll have something better. Antenna goes above water.” He held it up. It was short and thin, with a small bulb on top. Thoughtfully, Tony had painted it ocean-blue. “I was thinking I could stick it on your tail, unless that’ll interfere with your swimming. It could go on any part of you, really, as long as you can easily hold the transmitter above water.” He tapped the bulb. “Like I said. Give me like a month and I’ll work something better out. This was totally last minute. I’m embarrassed to be even giving you this, honestly. What are you, a _sperm whale_? I don’t tag my friends. It’s a disgrace, is what it is, but it’s what I got.”

I had no idea what he was talking about, besides the fact that the antenna could go on my tail, and it had to be above water.

“Sperm whales are fierce warriors,” I said lightly. “It won’t interfere with my swimming.” I offered him the tip of my tail. It was maybe twice the size of his arm.

“It’s gotta dry, too—hang on.” He dried off my tail with a rag and then stuck the antenna onto it with some kind of glue, muttering indignantly all the way. “This,” he added fiercely when it was done, “Is _temporary_. If you still want to be in communications with us after this nonsense, I will make you something _better_. Understood?”

Warmed, I nodded. “Okay,” I said. I leaned forward, and Tony touched my nose gently, sincerely.

I was terribly attached to him, I realized. He was my first mortal friend in centuries. I gazed at him warmly and decided that because I had tamed him, I would keep him. It was no small thing, taming a human. They were willful and clever, and nigh on impossible to domesticate.  But somehow I had managed it. Lucky me: my very own mortal. My Tony.

“Hey, Loki,” Tony added, hand still on my nose. “Got a communicator for you. Don’t know if it’ll hold up to all the shapeshifting, but it’s yours.”

My father deliberated. I could practically see the ferry wheels turning in his head. Take the communicator, and its added safety, but risk giving too much away to an enemy? Refuse it, and run that much more of a risk, but be safe from any of their plots and plans? My poor scheming father.

_Take it,_ I suggested. _At its worst, you can let the water ruin it, or simply take it out._

This seemed to appease him, for he consented without words. He stepped delicately between my eyes, down the ridge of my nose, crouched, and held out a hand. Tony passed him the little device, which he placed in his ear. He grimaced.

_“Check-check two,”_ Steve said, professionally, and without warmth. 

“I can hear you,” father said sourly.

“Good,” Tony replied. “That’s that. I’m going to need some time to figure out what the fuck this weird treasure map you gave me even _is_ , seriously. Then we’re going to set out. That’s a little more than a day’s time.”

“Plenty of time to swim, then,” father said. “I quite like this mako shark. We shall meet you there.” _Alright?_

_I could use a big swim,_ I agreed. I dropped my jaw and smiled at Tony. “Will the communicators work that far?”

“Yours will. It’s based on a satellite transmitter,” Tony said. “It’ll be a little bit delayed but not too bad. Same shit they use for whales. And it’s actual shit. ARGOS is the stupidest thing I have ever seen. I pity every marine biologist ever. Just saying. I’m so improving that.”

I nodded slowly so as not to dislodge my father. “We’ll swim there, and you’ll be able to find us.” I waved my tail at him, with its glued-on transmitter. It itched.

_And if you don’t want detection?_ my father fretted.

_I hold it underwater. But they won’t betray us._

“Excellent,” said Bruce, all warm smiles. “Let us know how it looks as you get closer. If we get there first, we’ll keep you posted too.”

Father huffed impatiently. He twisted and dived off the back of my head; by the time he hit the water he was a mako shark. “I’ll keep you posted,” I echoed. “We’re not done talking about New York.”

“No, we are so not,” Tony said darkly, but he waved anyway when I slipped back from the boat to dive.

My father waited for me beneath the surface. _This way,_ he said tersely, and arrowed off. I followed.

We spent long hours swimming in silence. My father was stronger now, for his restful night, but his form was still a mako. He had Asgardian – or, or whatever he was, he had not said – strength, but it was not infinite, and he could not sustain that fast speed forever. He kept twirling back to be sure I was keeping up. Gradually, he slowed from his sprint, and let me catch up to swim at his side.

_Father,_ I asked him at last, _are you well?_

_There is much to think about,_ he sighed. _Tell me more of your sparkling sea._

I wasn’t sure how that made any less to think about, but I obliged him. I whistled to the marlin, and taught father the racing games of the sailfish. I found a mola mola for him to laugh at, and then I ate it, even though it was small. I taught him how to leap above the waves and saw an albatross, who was willing to sing to us when I asked her, if I brought her some food. I scared up some squid from somewhere, and though father tried to help he was fairly hapless at herding squid, which was funny in its own right. He managed to catch some for himself, though it earned him a face full of ink.  

The tension started to leave my father’s movements. He relaxed enough to laugh at the squid, and at the albatross’ silly song.

Night fell, and the ocean glowed. Having stayed up the previous night, I begged rest for myself. My father did not begrudge me, and I fell asleep with my nose above the water, gazing at the stars. I let my tail slip above the waves for the first time, telling Tony and the others where we were.

Generally, the sky made me think of Asgard, but that starry night, my father was beside me for the first time in centuries. I did not need to wonder. I drifted off in peace.

At daybreak, we continued onward.

Father knew the direction, but I knew the currents. We had to pass through the Gulf Stream eventually, that fast rush of water that curls up the side of North America. It does funny things to the temperature, and my father twisted uncomfortably as we swam though the warm current, only to end up in a shock of cold. It was a big change, but one that I am used to. My father on the other hand was naturally warm-blooded. He was used to a form that could compensate, unlike a cold-blooded one. In the shape of a shark—or a serpent—those few degrees were overwhelming. He cringed at the abrupt change, and odd, blue patterns whispered down his flank and side like a tiger shark. I thought he was maybe shifting again, but he had never seen a tiger shark before. Besides, it was only the color: his shape didn’t change. Very strange indeed.

He nearly swam through a whole patch of man o’wars once we reached the warmer water. They were big too, big enough to sting even me. I herded him away before he became entangled in them.

I kept up with my chatter, since it seemed to cheer him: I brought my father to shallower seas once we reached the equator, so he could see the reefs. At one point, we got swallowed up in a rush of little blue tangs. I showed him the mouths of the rivers that had mangrove forests, where I used to play when I was little.

And then we passed south of the equator, and father led me toward land.

And then the fish started to disappear.

I whistled for the marlin. Nothing. No turtles. No sea birds. Finally, we hit a great wall of comb jellies. My father balked.

I did too, to be honest. This many meant dead waters: no food.

_No, they don’t sting,_ I told my father, who cruised warily at my side. _They’re just sort of—gross._ I made myself swim through them. Sticky but not painful, and their soft, strange bodies felt unpleasant on my nose and sides. They were thick, too, nearly to the seafloor, which was shallower here.   My father swam in my wake, neatly avoiding the worst of them. Damn him and his small size, I thought without heat.

_Why so many?_ he asked.

_Don’t know. It’s a bad sign, though._

_We’re getting closer,_ he said darkly and pushed onward.

The wall of jellies didn’t stop. The waters got shallower and shallower, and before I knew it I was on dry land for the first time in centuries.  It was a beach, with mangroves farther back and around. Someone had cut them down for a small stretch, leaving only white sand. I blinked at the sun. “Father?”

He had transformed and teleported: he stood, man-shaped, just beyond the surf. “They’re here,” he said, and started to pace. “They’re here. I know they are here. They must be cloaked.” He kicked up a great cloud of sand and paced.

“Cloaked?” I asked.

“Layers, my sweet,” my father said. “There are circles of spells here—can you smell them?”

I whispered out my tongue, tasting. It was complicated. I shrugged at him, unused to land-tastes.

“The outer spell is a good one,” father said, pacing. “It protects the perimeter. We cannot see or sense it. There are rings of protections—more on the inside. Likely there are traps set along the beach.” He clenched his fists.  

My tail was still under water, though the bulk of me was not. I lifted it, and its little transmitter, above the waves. “Tony,” I said, feeling a little foolish. “We’re here, but father thinks that they’re cloaked.”

_“Cloaked!”_ Tony replied furiously after a brief moment’s silence. _“Are you fucking kidding me?”_

“Language,” my father drawled. I rolled my eyes at him.

_“I searched the beach top to bottom and didn’t find anything. Are you sure it’s the right place?”_ Natasha asked, skeptical. They’d sent her out as an advanced guard, of course, to talk to the aliens like we’d discussed. Apparently, they hadn’t wanted to talk. Somehow, I found that disappointing. 

I spoke before my father could. “It’s crowded with comb jellies,” I said. “The marlin call that a dead spot. No fish. No food. Just jellies. If they’ve taken all the fish, that’s what would happen.”

_“We’re about six miles west of you,”_  Steve said. _“We’ve been circling here for a few hours. There’s nothing there.”_

“They’re here,” my father said again. “Just hidden. They’ve a great generator, a ship like the Other’s generals had. It pulled me in, through their cloaking spell. I could go that route again, and break their device from within, but I do not believe I can fight my way out alone.”

Oh, I didn’t like the sound of that. I was hardly about the let my father break himself into a place he could not break out of.

Except—except _I_ could break out of it.

The idea came to me in a flash.

 “…Or I could change the rules,” I said.

_“What?”_

“What?”

Tony and my father, overlapping. How ironic, given their mutual disdain. I wondered if my father remembered.

“If you cannot win the game,” I said slowly, “Change the rules. All this time we have been thinking from outside. No fish. Find the aliens. Attack the aliens. What if I posed as bait instead? I could find them from the inside. They want big fish to feed their queen, don’t they?”

“Jörmungandr,” my father said, horrified.

“I could swim into their nets. You can track me, right, Tony? I shall fight to break their generator. They’ve been catching blue whales and basking sharks—they’ve never seen anything like me before.” I grinned at my father with my fangs, and heard the venom drip down to sizzle on the hot sand.

He was shaking his head. “Too risky, my sweet,” he said, all anxiety. “They’ll kill you as soon as they get the net around you.”

I slithered up the beach slowly. “I don’t think they will.” I slipped out my tongue to taste the air. It didn’t work so well under water, but I got glorious tastes here – metal, twofold, and trees and salt air and my father. There was a trap here, made of metal. I could taste it. A second taste: metal threefold. I looked up.

Tony whispered down from a great height as Iron Man. I didn’t want to hear his protests. It was a sound plan. I slipped farther up the beach, coiling myself so even my tail was outside of the surf. I took up nearly the whole slope. My father rested against one of my coils. “Jörmungandr,” he said urgently, “You must go back—”

The trap sprung like a toadfish. One moment it was turning to argue with my father, the next steel jaws had closed around me, ensnaring me.  It was a hard bite: I felt it, strong and vicious. From somewhere, my father and my Tony yelled.

I knew what to do. I went limp.

Playing dead in the sea is a terrible idea, for it will not deter a most predators. A shark can hear a heartbeat, after all, but even if it couldn’t—food is food, dead or alive. But, of course, I did not want to deter them. I wanted them to take me in.

And take me in they did.


	8. Chapter 8: Tony

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Almost done! So remember the violence I warned for? Yeah, it's in this chapter. Um--I didn't actually want that to happen that way, but then Tony just--had that idea so I kind of went with it, even though it's gross. 
> 
> He was just as grossed out as I was, so there was that. Still, fair warning: some gore.

I wasn’t prepared. I mean, I wasn’t prepared for Georgie to suddenly disappear, but I really wasn’t prepared for Loki to go _completely apeshit._ Because Loki went completely apeshit.

He turned this awful shade of ashy green, and cried Georgie’s name, high pitched and terrified, which could almost be funny. Before I knew anything about him, it would have been funny. Sonovabitch did throw me out a window, after all. I had no love for him. But that day, on that beach, knowing what I did about Georgie and Loki, it made the bottom drop out of my stomach and the hairs stand up on the back of my neck. 

“JARVIS,” I said, “scan for the tracker.”

JARVIS beeped an affirmative, so as not to block the incoming call: Steve on the Quinjet, concealed in the sky using an array of mirrors designed by moi. “ _Tony? What’s the story? Georgie just—disappeared?_ ”

“Obviously he disappeared, you pack of imbeciles!” Loki shrieked. Apparently he had not taken out his comm. That was—almost flattering.

 _“He sprang the trap. He’s inside. Clever move. Can you track him, Tony?”_ Natasha, cool and collected as always, damn her and her superspy creepiness.  Well, she would think that was a clever move.

“It was immensely clever,” Loki snapped, “If you are a trained warrior with a brain. Jörmungandr is a serpent who has never had to strategize or fight a better armed foe before, so all it was, was _immensely stupid_.” He made a gesture as if he were throwing a Frisbee. Green light sparked, here and there in a wide, flickering circle around him. Whatever he’d done didn’t seem to work, because he snarled in frustration.

“ _No signal found, sir,_ ” JARVIS said. _“I hypothesize that the forcefield or shield that blocks these creatures from view also is blocking the tracker.”_

“It also blocks me,” Loki spat as his green light winked and danced around him like particularly creepy stars.  He looked at me for a long moment, then back up the beach to where Georgie disappeared.

“ _What about the other guy?_ ” Bruce suggested. _“They’ll probably take him. He’s big enough. He could smash them from within.”_

“That was Jörmungandr’s plan, idiot,” Loki snapped, looking away. “The same thing twice is twice as ineffectual. Iron Man. Aim your plasma beam or whatever it is you shoot just there.” He pointed to—well. It was a tree.

But what the hell. Who knew? Maybe it was only supposed to look like a tree. I held up both hands, thumbs together and palms open. “Say pretty please,” I said.

Loki glared.

“Well, it was worth a try,” I said, and fired the repulsors at full strength. I braced to sustain it for a minute, just to be sure.

Loki rolled his eyes and examined my beam. Apparently, he saw something he liked (of course he did; my repulsor beams were awesome) and nodded.  He reached out and snapped his fingers.  Tiny green lights danced, and then died.

Nothing. Loki scowled. I sustained the blast and said, “Try again.”

Loki scowled at me harder. He waved a hand, throwing green sparks. Nothing.

He snarled, waved me to continue blasting the damn tree, which wasn’t obliterating. That alone was suspect, because at this point, any regular palm tree would have been reduced to mulch.

Loki cleared his throat. He took a breath.

He sang.

He fucking sang.

I wasn’t sure if I was more surprised by the impromptu opera or my missing giant sea serpent, and that was saying something. Still, Loki had kind of a nice voice, clear and strong. I would have totally made fun of him, but his words took the breath from my throat. 

 _I see you there,_ he sang, and I had the sense that it was not in English, the way I didn’t when he or Thor used Allspeech otherwise. Generally, it sounded perfectly fluent, spoken like any human, and you’d never know it was being translated from something else unless they’d told you. This was different. It sounded ancient, like the sort of thing you’d see written on cave walls. The weird bit was that I knew it rhymed, even though the English words I heard did not.  _Hiding in the boughs of the Yggdrasil. The leaves are sweet indeed, but autumn will come, and they will rot, and I will see you for what you are. You cannot hide from me. Reveal yourself._

From the tree, the blue energy from my repulsors spidered out, running along invisible wires like fairy lights, revealing them. Loki sang the little verse again, voice darker and more intent. My light, turning a weird sort of blue-green color, crept along those wires until they were visible: the glowing trap that Georgie had sprung. Behind it, like a shadow, Loki’s song revealed the track in the sand, where they had dragged my buddy up hill, up into something else—that also looked like a shadow.

Loki sang the song again, louder, angrier, and now it changed. The power of it resonated in my arc reactor, in my gut. I got the sense that this was some serious fucking magic. That this was like me building a particle accelerator in my basement level magic. Like Loki was pulling all the stops. I kept up the repulsor beams. I knew that that was the boost he needed to keep this—whatever this was—going. I was part of it. Part of the spell. I didn’t think I could stop even if I wanted to, and I didn’t.

Frankly it felt fucking incredible. Like being a kid sitting on a bicycle, coasting down the steepest hill. Exhilarating, but also somehow sweet, the way childhood joy is sweet.   

 _I see you there,_ Loki sang, furious, _Hiding in the boughs of the Yggdrasil. The leaves are sweet indeed, but autumn will come, and they will rot, and when they do I will destroy you. You have taken something of mine, and I will eviscerate you to retrieve it. See the lights, twinkling, so bright on your boughs. Watch them shine. Watch them burn. Watch them unmake you while you scream, for I am Fire, and I am Chaos, and I am the End of All Things—_

“Tony, I’m really not liking that,” Steve said softly in my ear.

The spell thing was amazing, but I sort of agreed. Because those ropes and wires, the first things Loki had lit up with my power, started to just sort of—disintegrate. But they disintegrated up, like they were—like they were—

Everything else around them got brighter. The disintegration traveled along the great wires of the trap like fire, and as things disappeared everything else became brighter, and disintegrated faster.

Energy, I realized, floored and horrified and kind of delighted. He was converting matter into energy. He used me to start the process, but now he had it. It was a feedback loop: the more matter he unraveled, the more energy he had. He could do that. I was _dying_ to do that.

I was going to do that, I thought distantly. I was going to figure out how he’d done it, and then I was going to bring power to every man, woman, and child on the _planet_.

Now the ship behind the trap was starting to flicker and light up. I powered down my repulsors, because I knew I could, because Loki had it now. I could see the bodies of the creatures running around in a panic: Big and spindly, but still shadowy.

“Um,” I said, “I think he’s going to take down the whole damn thing.”

 _“No, Tony, you need to stop him,”_ Bruce in my ear, urgent. _“He’s converting matter into energy, isn’t he?”_ That was my Brucie – always right there with me. _“I think—Tony. Listen to what he’s saying. The end of the world? That’s—not good.”_

It really wasn’t. That wouldn’t work.

And if he did—well.

I didn’t give myself time to think through my spectacularly bad idea. I stole up behind him.

The thing was, he didn’t look crazed. I remembered crazed Loki, the guy who had invaded New York, with his big evil scepter and his cackle of doom. That guy had been completely, bag-of-cats nuts. This guy looked angry. And he looked determined. And he looked afraid.

“I think you have to stop now, buddy,” I whispered.

He vibrated with rage, and his green, green eyes turned to me. I heard Natasha say my name warningly in my ear. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the plates on my armor start to glow. I absolutely did not let myself freak out. “Wouldn’t want to disintegrate your son by accident, yeah?” I inhaled shakily. The whole energy thing was cool and all, but I really didn’t want to die that way.

But man, what a way to go.

His eyes widened. _“Oh, but stay poised on the brink of destruction!”_ he sang, and that was a fucking gorgeous line in whatever language that was, even if it sounded totally cheesy in English.  Maybe that was why Asgardians spoke all high and mighty all the time. Maybe it just didn’t sound as good in English as it did in whatever other language they spoke.

He sucked in a breath, looked at me with huge eyes, as though shocked at what he’d done, even though he was clearly the guy who’d done it. He stopped singing. The silence, for a moment, rang. Behind him, the ship glowed and pulsed and then faded, slowly.

And then, as if on cue, there was an enormous, thundering crash.

 _“Sir, George’s tracker is online!”_ JARVIS said.

 _“Yeah no kidding!”_ called Steve. _“We’re deploying—Avengers assemble!”_

I whirled.

The empty beach was no longer empty. The remainders of the wire trap sagged and sparked, and behind it squatted a large ship with ominous blinking lights. The ship was deep purple in color, and there were hundreds—god, thousands—of weird, spindly red aliens pouring out of it. They were funny and insubstantial, like ghosts, but I could hear them clear as day. Robots, flying ones, shot up too—and I recognized them as one of the things that had nearly drowned me just outside of New York Harbor. It had been attacking barges.

I’d tracked them to South America. Of course. One of them shrieked and divebombed, directed a weird swirling blue laser at me; Loki blocked it with a growl of rage.

Hey, thanks man, I thought but didn’t say. He had to save my life a lot more than just that to make up for the window thing. I could hold a grudge like nobody’s business, okay.

There was a second thunderous crash, and the ship and the aliens flickered, and then solidified. Their skin was deep red and their eyes bright yellow. They looked nothing like the Chitauri—they had four eyes, for one-- but they were just as angry. They charged toward us, and more robots took to the air.

“He’s broken their shields,” Loki said softly. “That’s my clever boy.”

“So,” I said, watching them approach. “Gameplan: kill their queen?”

“Find my son,” Loki said, dark and determined, “Then kill the queen.”

Decision time. I could hear the Avengers behind me: Hulk gave a gleeful time-to-smash bellow, and Steve had left the Quinjet to the Widow, who could shoot down those weird barge-attacking robots.

There were a lot of aliens. But I was fairly certain killing the queen would end the fight. And I could lift Loki right over the fray, and deposit him behind. I mean, there were the robots to consider, but I knew I was faster than they were, from before.

“Right,” I said into the comm, “Detour. Hold tight, Lo-Lo.”

“ _What_ did you just call me?” Loki blurted over everyone else’s shouts of dismay. No one ever liked my detours, even though, like, ninety percent of the time they led to victory, and that other ten percent led to some other form of awesome. Ungrateful much.

I powered my repulsors and grabbed Loki by the back of his whatever-the-fuck that shirt thing he was wearing was called. He gave an excellent little girl yelp when we shot up off the ground. I had JARVIS record it for prosperity.

 _“Stark what the hell are you doing!”_ Steve demanded.

“Going after the queen,” I said, dodging a robot and blasting it. “Pretty sure that’ll finish the fight.”

Before Steve could answer, Romanoff said, “ _At least take down some from the air._ ”

Loki didn’t say anything, but he did wave a hand: about a hundred aliens below us caught fire. More robots spiraled down, on fire and sparking. Man, he was pissed.

I fired a few rockets down there for good measure.

I hopped us over the fray like a leap frog, or whatever. I let Loki down by the mouth of the ship, and I meant to leave him to it—and then some asshole alien came at me with a spear.

Loki fucked off right away, the bastard: up and into the ship, leaving me to deal with this clown. I blasted him, but he had some buddies and that was just obnoxious.

So sometimes I’m really stupid, because before I knew it they had pushed me back, back into the confined space of the ship, where I couldn’t fly.

The air was strange in there, heavy, and it smelled like metal. I had JARVIS filter it, and blasted at the bastard aliens. I fired a rocket, and they deflected it. Guns and blasters and heavy artillery; none of it had any effect. And they kept whacking me with their spears which, rude.

I wondered how the others were doing.

I seemed to be at an impasse with my group of stupid red aliens. They were scaly, skin plated like a pangolin, and it reflected my shit right back at me which, let me tell you, was annoying. Suit’s not made for hand-to-hand, not really; I like my long-ranges better. Still, I got a good few punches in before I stumbled down a fucking trap door.

Never reached the bottom, of course, since wonderful JARVIS turned on the foot repulsors. They’d banged down the top to whatever thing I’d fallen down, which would have left me in darkness except, you know, suit.

“JARVIS, lights,” I said, and the LEDs at the temples turned on. I looked around and nearly gagged.

It was great, echoy dark chamber—or it would be echoy, except that it was filled with piles and piles of stinking dead animals. The thing was that they weren’t little animals:  forty-foot whale sharks, thirty-foot basking sharks, hundred-foot blue whales and fin whales—my vocabulary for marine animals had grown substantially, thanks to Georgie. There were leatherback sea turtles, mola molas, white sharks, giant squid, oarfish—every sea animal to ever grow to an absurd size was there, in that pile, stinking and dead.

I’d found the big fish missing from Georgie’s ocean. From my ocean.

It was almost worse than if they’d stolen gold or jewels. Gold can be returned. There was no coming back from dead. And everything in that chamber was very dead. There was so much—too much for one individual to eat, surely.

I descended, slowly, to investigate. If this bitch had laid eggs, if this was food for her, her next offspring or something, or they were trying to take over the world, I needed to know so we could torch the place.

“JARVIS, search for a heat signature,” I said, “Or a cold spot—anything out of the ordinary.” It was kind of a long shot. Georgie didn’t show up on thermal because he was cold-blooded and Loki showed up as a cold spot instead of a hot spot for some reason, so who knew with these aliens.

But sure enough, the dead fishes and whatever blazed yellow. Warm. “I don’t see any—eggs or anything—” I told JARVIS.

“No sir,” JARVIS said. “There are no eggs. It seems more like a—kind of blanket.”

I drifted closer.

There was a big fin whale contorted into a weird shape, tail hanging over its belly on the side of a hill of corpses like the number 7. There was something funny about those flukes, I thought, squinting. They were—they were the wrong color? Sort of fuzzy and gray-yellow—

The tail was covered in weird goop, and the stuff moved like a whip. I gave a very manly scream and leaped back in the air, and the fucking thing reached, then curled back up in a proboscis before oozing down again into innocent-looking slime.

“Oh my god,” I spluttered, “Oh my god? JARVIS did you see that?”

“I did, sir,” JARVIS said. “I hypothesize—some kind of fungus. A slime mold?”

“Ugh,” I said, because, I mean, ugh. That was disgusting. “What the hell? Is it everywhere?”

“Yes, sir,” JARVIS replied. “It seems to coat nearly the entirety of the graveyard. There is a lighter patch to your far right—as though it has been intentionally removed.”

I flew over to where JARVIS indicated, and he was right—of course he was. Now that I knew what I was looking for, I saw the goopy stuff layered thickly. It was sort of translucent, tinged yellow or gray, and it was everywhere. But big swaths of it had been removed in one section as if by sheers, or some kind of blade. It was very deliberate; the marks sheered away this stuff in squares, like a grid. Almost like—

“Farming,” I breathed. “They’re farming it. Look, Jar, the fish and stuff—they’ve all got a couple of bites taken out of them and then they were sent here. Bet you anything it was the queen that bit them; she bites through the skin so the slime can get in. Then they leave it here to—ferment, or whatever. Then harvest it. They’re farming. Do they eat it?”

“Perhaps,” JARVIS replied. “There are ants who live similarly. Perhaps it is the same strategy.”

“So,” I grinned, “If we torch it, we fuck up their food supply, yeah?”

“Perhaps it would be wise to find a way out before torching it as you say, sir,” JARVIS said, droll. 

“You ruin all my fun,” I replied, but he was right of course. “JARVIS plot a course to get out of here—there must be an entrance somewhere, if they’re coming in to harvest the slime stuff.”

JARVIS sent out a soft cheep, almost inaudible. It was a new feature, actually—based off echolocation. Thank you, Georgie, and your weird and wild seas.

The place was big—of course it was, to fit that giant disgusting slime farm. It took JARVIS a few good cheeps to find a door, or a hall, or whatever it was. I went to investigate.

God but the dead things were creepy, I thought as I flew over them. Now that I knew to look for it, I could see the slight sheen on the slime. If I’d fallen down here without the suit, the fall might not have killed me—but the slime certainly would have finished the job. Gross way to go.

I decided not to think about it.

The hall was surrounded by a wide swath of dead-things-without-slime, likely already harvested. Gross. So gross. Anyway, the hall was there, long and thin. I sort of hovered there for a moment, scanning for slime, before setting down and walking. Down the dark, creepy evil-hall, there was a pair of double doors. They weren’t locked. I pushed them open.

And promptly jumped back as Georgie’s tail nearly brained me.

“What the fuck!” I yelped.

Nobody responded, but I heard Georgie fucking _roar,_ this weird sea-monster screeching sound that made my blood run cold and my ears ring in my skull. It was inhuman, and frankly terrifying.

It sounded like the end of the world.

But there was an answering screech, and a familiar shout: Loki.

It was queen-time.

I powered the foot repulsors and rocketed through the doors, accompanied by another hair-raising screech from Georgie.

I soared upwards, and then further upwards because the room was huge. It was shaped like an auditorium, or a mostly wrecked auditorium. Georgie was draped around the place like Christmas tinsel, coiled around the edges of the room and the middle, and up and down and everywhere, too big to really fit. He had gashes in his sides and belly and was bleeding steadily. His blood was red—too red, the wrong red, almost orange and bright.  He screamed again, head raised high, fangs extended.

I didn’t have to ask why.

Trapped in his coils was the damn hive queen. Her fucking massive frog jaws were fastened on him, weird incongruous teeth drawing more of that too-bright blood.

The queen was goddamn huge. She was frog-shaped, sort of, except that she was red like the rest of her people, with bits of like, gross orange splattered here on there on her amphibious body. Her weird froggy hands were tipped with black claws, which she also dug into my friend’s sides.

Georgie was wrapped around her like a python, but that meant he couldn’t strike her with his fangs and poison her. I guess he wasn’t doing a good job of squeezing her to death, because she was definitely still alive and biting. Where the hell was Loki?

I swooped over to Georgie’s great hissing head. He actually struck at me, snapping his jaws. His venom sizzled alarmingly on my suit. He was practically foaming at the mouth—just like any monstrous sea serpent.

“Georgie!” I cried. “I can’t get a clean shot at her if you’re all wrapped up around her like that!”

His blown pupils narrowed abruptly to focus on me. “You can’t _get_ a clean ssssssssssshot,” he hissed, a far cry from his usual crisp, quiet elocution. “Sssssssssshe’s eaten him!”

Ah. Hence the crushing. Georgie was his father’s son after all. Neither was very good at rescue missions. For god’s _sake._

“Then you are also crushing Loki,” I said, perfectly reasonably and not panicky at all.

Georgie jerked back with a horrified cry that devolved into a shriek of pain. I dived down.

His gray and white coils had relaxed, but in response the damned queen had lunged, biting down harder and tearing at his belly with her claws. She’d already ripped off several of his scales.

Well. As Georgie had said—time to change the game.

Before Georgie could tighten his coils again I darted into one of the widening gaps, and got a good shot at the queen with my repulsors. She shrieked, lifting her jaws from Georgie’s poor bleeding wound, and met my eyes.

I aimed again—

\--except she had a _fucking disgusting tongue_ , black and slimy and it grabbed me, sticking to my suit above the arc reactor and tugging me towards her mouth. I shouted and gripped the tongue with one hand, pulling at it. It was sticky, and my gauntlet held fast, even when I figured out that the pulling thing wasn’t going to work.

I was about to fire the repulsor when Georgie struck. He was fast, and he went for her fucking face, fighting dirty in a way I was sure would make his father proud. But he was too big—all that open mouth just meant she could get one of her claws in there, and she tore at his tongue. I heard him scream again.

Shit. Shit. I fired the repulsor, and thankfully it severed her horrible tongue, though a bit of it was still stuck to me. Gross.

Okay. Okay. Think strategically—Loki. Is Loki still alive in there? Could I free him? That would kill her for sure—

Ugh, but it was disgusting. I had to push through Georgie’s coils to reach what might have been her belly, and her vicious hind-claws struck out at me. She was starting to slow down though – had Georgie got her with his venom? Fuck if I knew.

There were lasers on the suit, meant for welding. I hit her with one of those. The squelching and the screaming made my stomach turn, but damn if I wasn’t right. One claw scratched around my side, and then grasped me around the middle, but too late—Loki had cut his way out using the incision I started, and he was pissed beyond pissed. He came out like that thing in _Alien_ and, just, ugh. He was covered in all sorts of slimy shit that I did not even want to think about. His hair was like—stuck up on one side but plastered there like a sculpture with this green bile-y stuff. So gross. And there was a glob of her weird blood on his nose.

“Away, my sweet, it’s over,” he bit out, and Georgie pulled his head away.

“Father?” he whispered.

The queen, very bloody and definitely dying, struck out one last time, clearly meaning to take Georgie down with her. Loki and I apparently had the same thought, because fuck that: I fired a repulsor, and Loki threw a knife. Both of us aimed for the back of her neck, where her spinal chord would be if she were from Earth.

Apparently some things were universal because she dropped like a rock and with her, all the lights in the room.

My LEDs came on before I asked. Loki snapped a finger and, like, conjured a cute little flame. I saw Georgie’s eyes dilate.

“Is it over?” he whispered, hushed.

“We must check,” Loki said, but he exchanged a glance with me. 

Without words, we moved to the door. Through it, there were more aliens, dropped as if dead on the ground.

“They still exhibit life signs, sir,” JARVIS said softly. “It is as though they are comatose.”

“I see,” Loki said, and snapped his fingers again, somehow viciously. The bodies all arched and then went lax.

“So,” I said, “Why didn’t you do that at the start?”

“A conscious body has reflexes that an unconscious one does not,” Loki said absently, kneeling to inspect a dead one. “Even asleep, a heart will not often cease at my order without a great deal of struggle. These are all half-dead. Brain-dead, I believe, is the term you would use.”

I shivered. “From killing the queen.”

“Yes. They were psychically linked, as you suspected.”

There was a rattle and a loud scraping noise. The metal doorframe groaned as Georgie forced his way through, wincing. Loki rose.

“My sweet, you’re injured,” he said.

“All the more reason to get back to the ocean,” Georgie said unhappily. “Can we go now?”

I looked around at the destruction in the ship, and I knew it would be worse outside. I wondered who they were, abruptly, these people we had killed. Why were they even here?

“Yeah,” I said, “We can go.”

In silence, we tromped down the weird metal hallway. I could hear Georgie flinching behind me, as his scrapes and cuts pulled against the metal grating. There wasn’t anything I could really do about that from here, but once we got back to the ocean, I could do the liquid bandage thing. I could feel Loki next to me, flinching with every flinch, his gummed-up hair still splayed ridiculously. When I wasn’t so tired, I was going to laugh myself sick over that.  

But as we walked down the eerie corridor, and the still-warm dead, Loki paused.

“Father?” asked Georgie at my back. Loki glanced at me.

“Technology,” he said. “This is your—specialty, yes?”

I shrugged at him, fake-modest. “I mean, I did invent a new element and everything, so you could say that.”

He rolled his eyes at my sarcasm. “Then let us be sure these creatures do not come back. Jörmungandr, will you return to the sea and wait there? It will help with your wounds.”

Poor Georgie didn’t even protest. He nodded and slipped away. Loki pulled me through another hallway before I could get smooshed by Georgie’s enormous girth. In silence, we watched him go. It took a while.

It was strange, standing side by side with Loki. I’d just saved his ass, and he’d just sort of saved earth’s ass by helping take out the queen. And we both damn well loved that stupid, humongous snake. We worked together pretty well, too. Fuck. He’d thrown me out a window once. I couldn’t start to _like_ him. There was no forgiving defenestration! But apparently there was. Fuck my life.

Once Georgie was finally gone, Loki beckoned me, and I followed.

“So what’s the deal here,” I said, “Why do you even care if they ever come back?”

Loki rolled his eyes. A glob of goop dripped down his forehead, but he didn’t seem to notice. “My son lives in your oceans,” he drawled. “If they come back, they may seek revenge. This is a preventative measure.”

Shit, he was planning ahead. He was planning ahead for aliens.

This was exactly the sort of thing I would do. I wouldn’t do it immediately—Hell, I would clean up first—but yeah. 

“How do you know where to go?” I asked.

He glanced at me, then glanced back to the corridor ahead of us. “This is the same kind of ship as the ones used by the Chitauri.”

I stopped walking, reeling. “Wait. Shit. These—but these guys weren’t—”

“No, they were not,” Loki said. He kept walking, and I staggered to catch up. “In truth the Chitauri do not use warships. They are a drone race, similar to this one. Those that were assigned to me were stolen, as were their weapons, as were their ships. As was I. I assure you, none of us wanted to be there that day.” The last was said with wry humor.

“Wait—what the hell—then who stole them?! What do you mean _you were stolen?_ ”

Loki gave me wry smile. He put his hand on a panel, which caused a door to slide open with an easy hiss.

I followed him, still spluttering questions, and he led me to another panel, which he tapped. It lit up, showing strange letters, backed, like a computer desktop screen, with an image of a galaxy.

“I need you to find the ship’s log,” Loki said.  “I have wandered these ships, but I was never—allowed—in the control room.”

That did not sound pleasant. “I can’t read it,” I said, but I tapped the screen anyway.

Loki clucked his tongue disapprovingly. “How _do_ you mortals function without the Allspeech? Honestly.” He tapped the top of the screen, and everything became English.

He also left a goopy handprint. Gross.

Though it was English, their interface fucking sucked, and it took me a minute to figure out why. But once I got that their logic was different from a human’s—of course it was—it became sort of backward- intuitive. And sort of fun, figuring out something that was obviously easy for a species other than mine. Like looking at a Monet backwards and inside out. Once I figured out that it was supposed to be a fuzzy painting of a pond, as it were, I found the log with little problem.

Behind me, Loki hummed. I read.

And promptly became infuriated. They weren’t fucking invaders.

 _They were on a fucking road trip and they ran out of snacks._ Their food supply got low and so they stopped to pick some stuff up. A whale or two here and there and I wouldn’t be fucking livid, but then they got greedy, and started taking too much.  The fucking queen wanted to settle down for a few years and bleed the world dry before heading off again. God, fuck her. Good riddance!

“Hush,” Loki told me, amused. I hadn’t realized I was ranting. He reached over my shoulder and scrolled up. “More importantly, will anyone be looking for them?”

“Don’t hush me, you bastard,” I muttered. I wrinkled my nose at the goopy smudge he left. “Why haven’t you magicked yourself clean?”

He looked up enough to scowl at me before turning back to the monitor. “It’s resistant, even to the illusion. I will need to bathe the mundane way.” He glanced at me once more, and after a beat—hesitation?—he added, “and frankly I want a damn sample.”

Oh my god. Oh my god.

Oh my god. Brucie was going to fucking _freak out._

I didn’t hate him anymore. It was sudden and shocking and I just didn’t. I wanted him for another science bro. Shit. Shit.

“Oh my god,” I said, delighted, “Oh my god, _me too._ Pretty please can we have a magic and science playdate later?”

Loki snorted and tapped on the screen, pointing to the passage that essentially said _we are explorers and nobody will come to avenge us._ “I have no idea what a playdate is,” he said, wry, but his lip was curling in a smile, like he couldn’t quite help it.

I would put my arm around him except it might contaminate the sample and also ew. “We are going to have _so much fun._ ”


	9. Epilogue: Thor

It was Heimdall who told me that my brother yet lived. This should have been unsurprising, but I am a fool at times. Apparently, Loki had been hiding in shadows, or some other such magic; he cast it off, for whatever reason, and Heimdall called for me.

But he bid me to wait, as I stood in the observatory, breathing hard and unsure whether to weep with relief or throttle my idiotic brother. I did and do trust the Gatekeeper, so I waited, not very patiently.

At my questioning, Heimdall only told me, “He has found something he had lost. Wait a but a little longer, my prince.”

I knew not what Loki could have possibly lost that would require my patience, or whether he even deserved my patience. But I gritted my teeth and bore the waiting.

There was much to do in Asgard, anyway, after Malekith, and much to clean, and much to build. I threw myself into it, for several days, before the Gatekeeper called me back.

He did not say anything when I arrived on the observatory.

“Is it time?” I asked.

“It is,” he said. “A piece of advice, my prince: hold your blow until the other strikes first.”

Strange advice. I had done much of that of late—I liked to think I had learned much, over the past few years. I nodded anyway, and he opened the Bifrost.

I landed not in New Mexico, nor New York, but somewhere entirely different. It took me a moment to recognize the rolling hills and smell of seawater as Malibu—one of Tony Stark’s many homes. Why would my brother be here? I spun in a circle, looking around.

It registered very quickly. I had been standing upon a bluff, looking in the wrong direction. As I turned I saw the ocean spread before me and below me—an enormous gray serpent, sprawled out and sunning itself on the beach.

My heart seized in my throat. I gripped to Mjolnir’s short handle so hard my knuckles strained, for there was no mistaking Jörmungandr. I was to battle him, one day. The day he released his tail and poisoned the sky, the prophesy demanded that I battle him, and start the end of everything. It was to be the greatest battle of my life—and the last.

He was not chewing his tail, now. Was it now? Was now that time? So soon—my friends, my Jane, my kingdom not yet mine—surely it was not to end now.

No. I shifted my tunnel vision to the great creature’s head.

He was not reared back ready to strike, I realized. He was low to the ground and, standing there patting that great gray nose, was none other than Natasha Romanoff, my friend the Black Widow.

I blinked. My tunnel vision widened.

Scattered here and there around the beach were the Avengers, not battling the sea monster. Apparently they were barbequing. I blinked again. There stood Tony Stark and beside him, Loki. My brother looked—just fine. He was wearing simple fair, and stood at ease without armor, though he did not wear the clothes of Midgard. Tony was arguing with my brother about—something—as he flipped burgers. He kept waving his spatula and Loki kept trying to cross his arms stubbornly, but he broke the knot by gesturing whenever Tony said something likely infuriating.   Clint Barton was throwing a round disk into the air with Steve Rogers and Bruce Banner.

As I watched, Bruce dropped the disk. He picked it up again and tried to throw it, but clearly wasn’t as skilled as the others, because it wobbled in the air. Surely I was hallucinating.   

Heimdall had bade me not to strike first. Was this why? What had my brother been doing?

Very carefully and very quietly, I climbed down the bluff.

I can be stealthy. Not as well as my brother perhaps, but well enough. Still, when Clint Barton is a member of the party, there is no catching him unawares. With Natasha at his side, he strolled over to meet me when my feet hit ground. I heard the others give varying strangled and surprised gasps, but very clearly, I heard my brother’s frightened cry.

“Jörmungandr—run!”

_Run?_

Sure enough, the great serpent turned tail and fled, back into the sea—he was gone in the blink of an eye. He moved very quickly for a creature so large. He left sand in great gouges behind him, marking his trail.

“Hi,” said Clint, coming to stand before me.

“Hello,” I replied, deeply perplexed. Over Clint’s shoulder I saw Tony grab Loki’s arm, stopping him from storming up to me. Or possibly running away. Loki looked undecided. 

“Welcome back.” Natasha said. “We need to talk.”

I had been warned by Darcy of those words—the worst sentence in the English language, she had said. She’d even taught me to say them without the Allspeech. But Natasha was right: we did, indeed, need to talk.

Clint spoke before I could say anything of that nature. “Yeah, apparently there’s some sort of prophesy where you kill Georgie, and man, I’m sorry, but we can’t let you do that.”

_Georgie_? Surely he didn’t mean Jörmungandr.  “I—do not understand,” I said, because I really didn’t.

“The sea-snake is our friend,” Natasha said, too pleasantly to be genuine.  “Please don’t chop off his head.”

“Also!” Tony added, shouting from the barbeque, and still gripping Loki’s arm, “Isn’t he, like, your nephew or something? The ‘don’t kill your family’ rule shouldn’t only apply to Loki, jeeze!”

I opened my mouth. I closed my mouth. I looked at my friends, standing in sort of a semi-circle around me: Clint and Natasha, Steve and Bruce slightly farther back, Tony gripping my wayward brother’s arm. I knew not how to tell them that this battle was foretold by the Norns long before my birth in any way that they would understand. A prophesy like that meant nothing to a mortal. To a man of Asgard, it was as much a truth as gravity.

But there they stood, between me and my brother. “What say you, Loki?” I called.

He replied with a string of swears that luckily the Allspeech did not translate. He did not, however, tear himself from Tony’s grip. Now that was interesting. 

“What he means to say,” Natasha said pleasantly, “Is that he doesn’t like you, and he wants you away from his giant snake son.” She dimpled at me. “Personally, I don’t like him either, but I do like the snake, so we have a truce.”

“I’d gathered that,” I said.

“I have an idea,” Steve said abruptly. Behind him, I saw Tony and Loki roll their eyes in eerie synchrony.

“This prophesy—it’s the start of the end of the world, right?” Steve said.

I nodded, feeling somewhat relieved that someone had explained this to them already. I dearly wished to speak to my brother.

Possibly to throttle him, but that urge wasn’t new, so there was that.

“And it only starts when you _fight_ each other?” Steve continued.

“Oh my god, oh my god this is actually clever,” Tony blurted. He tugged on Loki’s arm. “Lo-Lo, Steve is being clever!”

“I am just as surprised as you are,” drawled Loki. He did not object to the frankly appalling nickname, which said quite a lot about his regard for Tony. Strange. I did wish that I knew what they were talking about. I was reminded of when we were boys in lessons with our tutors: Loki always two steps ahead. I looked to Steve to finish.

“Do you want the world to end?” Steve asked me.

“Of course not,” I said. “But it is foretold.”

“Sure it is,” Clint said, but he had clearly caught on to whatever Steve had cooked up. “But do you have to fight _now_?”

I blinked at him. What?

“Make a truce,” Steve said. “You can fight and end the world later. Georgie doesn’t want it to end either. He doesn’t want to fight you. So it’s foretold and you can’t stop it—that’s great. But does it have to be _now?_ ”

I blinked at him again. He—was not wrong. There was no set time for the great final battle. I always assumed that I would come across a great and powerful snake, slay it, and then so begin the end of everything. In truth I did not associate the great serpent of the prophesy with my brother. I had seen the snake only once before. He had been quite small then, barely the size of a Midgardian python. Loki had kept him secret, even from me. That prophesy—I had seen that small snake and thought only that I would one day slay it. I had not even been particularly impressed with it; it had seemed that barely a swing of my hammer and the battle would be over.

“No,” I said, for I most certainly did not want the world to end. “It does not have to be now. You are right. If he does not strike first, I will not strike back. I—would very much like to meet my nephew.” Because Stark was right. The ‘do not kill your family’ rule should apply to me as well.

And—he was my nephew. Shamefully, I had not considered that before.

“Wait you never _met_ him?” Clint blurted.

“Only the once,” I told him. “In the court. When he was cast out.”

“You lie,” snarled my brother. Now he did shake off Tony’s hand to storm up to me. “You _lie._ One look at him and you will go for his throat!”

“I give you my word,” I told Loki. I met his eyes. By the Norns, but my brother looked terrified. Not even for himself, for he must have known that I was livid with him for faking his death. No, he was afraid for the serpent—his son. He was visibly, viscerally afraid. My voice gentled in response to that fear. “If he wishes for peace as you say, then I do as well. I will not strike first.”

I held his gaze for a long moment. “I am so glad you live,” I added, almost a whisper. He looked ready to actually claw my eyes out, so I cuffed him, hard, around the back of the head. “Don’t you _ever_ do that again!” and drew him into an embrace before he could shout.

There was a high probability he would try to stab me. I was so glad to see him that I didn’t care. Of course, I was still furious, and very badly wanted to beat him into the ground, but that could wait until after this bizarre truce with Jörmungandr.

He didn’t stab me. He didn’t say anything. He’d frozen, actually, like a stag hiding from a lion. Over his shoulder, I saw that the others had gone still as well. I let him go and turned.

The great serpent had returned. His huge head was barely lifted above the surf, the rest of his body coiled out somewhere to sea. His jaw was easily large enough to swallow me whole, and the pits above his lips hinted at terrible venom. Great, yellow eyes watched me warily. I had no doubt that he could turn and flee back into the ocean quick as a blink if he so needed. He looked a formidable foe indeed. One day, I would defeat him in honorable battle—but today was not that day.

Provided he did not strike first.

“A truce?” he whispered. His voice was not sibilant—his Allspeech was civilized and cultured. To be honest, I had not expected him to be able to speak at all.

But of course he would, and of course he would speak with culture. He was Loki’s child. My brother’s _child._

“A truce,” I told him, meaning it, still marveling at his voice. “I will not strike first. Well met, Jörmungandr.”

His head dipped a little, great chin almost brushing the sand. “I will not strike first either,” he said earnestly. He sounded like a boy—late in his boyhood, almost a man, but not quite. “How long will the truce last? Father?” His yellow gaze darted to my brother, uncertain.

My brother, who was looking at me with pleading eyes. “His word is good,” he rasped. He was taut as a bowstring, but I was strangely touched. “I am the liar in the family.”

“Can it last forever?” the sea serpent asked me tentatively, and my heart clenched. A child. A child born with a monstrous visage, cast out—

“It can last so long as you do not strike,” I told him. “Because I will not strike first. Family should not murder family.” Because Tony was right about that, at least.

Jörmungandr flicked his tongue. It was a reptilian gesture, not something I associated with a companion but rather with a creature to be slain. I held still. “Are you my uncle?” he asked, still tentative. “Father? I don’t know how this works.”

It was doing strange things to my heart, that he kept looking to my brother for reassurance, kept calling him father.

“I don’t know either,” Loki said stiffly.  He clenched his fists. So strange to see.

My brother was a father. He had been for so long, and I had thought nothing of it, because his children were frightening to behold. I was such a fool.

They had dragged Loki and his children to my father’s court, that day. Loki had been desperate, begging and pleading like I had never seen, even then. It was enough to break my heart, but the creatures he defended and called his own flesh—monstrous. A wolf cub the size of a pony, a great gray python, and a horse with far too many legs. They had not seemed like children at all.

The horse was the least monstrous. My father kept him for a steed. Loki had sobbed into my shoulder when they had broken the stallion for saddle, inconsolable. But horses were made for saddle, I had said, and Sleipnir would bear the king—surely that was an honor. Looking back, I could see what a fool I was.

I had thought them only animals, but before me stood Jörmungandr, soft-spoken and uncertain and not monstrous at all. They were children. They were all children. Sleipnir, saddled like a pack animal, bearing his grandfather like a beast of burden. Fenrir, who had howled—not as a wolf howls, as I had thought, but as a child screams. They had done such awful things to him. Was he still on that mountain, starved and slavering? If he had had a mind at the start, surely, he must be mad by now. Some small measure of the horror Loki must have felt slipped down my spine. I had not thought of it. I was _such_ a fool.

Thank the Norns for Steve. I never would have known, if not for Steve. For all of Midgard. My affection for that strange world only grew.

“Yes,” I said, absolutely certain. “Yes, I am your uncle, if you will have me. I would have you as a nephew.”

“But we are not related by blood,” Jörmungandr replied. “And one day you must kill me.”

“But not this day,” I said, suddenly passionate. I wanted him, I realized, almost flabbergasted with the strength of it. I wanted him, every bizarre serpentine inch of him. My _nephew._ I had a _nephew_. My family. The other two were lost before I even knew them—a travesty. Shortly, I would rage about that, I thought in an abstract sort of way. But first the one in font of me, the one I suddenly wanted so badly I almost couldn’t breathe with it. “And one day—one day I imagine it will break my heart. When it comes, I would rather mourn my nephew than slay a nameless foe.”

He flicked his tongue again. Perhaps it was an uncertain gesture. “Father?”

“It is your choice, my sweet,” Loki rasped. He sounded truly terrible, and he looked so frightened as to be sick. “I cannot make it for you.”

“But I am a monster,” Jörmungandr said, and his voice was thick with tears. How could I ever slay him, I thought with wonder. Look at him. Frightening to behold, but so gentle. How could I have been such an unforgivable idiot?

I was so glad that they had stopped me.

“You are not a monster.” Tony. He’d come up on Loki’s other side, almost snarling. “You never could be.”

“Take it from me!” Bruce, from somewhere behind me. “I know a monster when I see one. Takes one to know one. You’re not it!”

“You’re not either,” Jörmungandr said, but it was more reflexive than anything. He looked at me for a long moment, but then seemed to make up his mind.

He leaned forward, slowly.

Every reflex I had screamed at me to strike. I had passed many lifetimes battling similarly-shaped creatures. They had wounded me, burned me with their blood and their venom. I had touched fingers with death many times, fighting. I held perfectly still.

My nephew approached, and his great nose bumped my chest gently. “I am a monster,” he said. “But I would rather have an uncle than a murderer. Well met, uncle Thor.”

I grinned at him and reached down to touch his nose. It was strangely soft, and I scratched away some dry scales. “I thought you monstrous when I heard the prophesy,” I told him. “Now I’m not so sure. I think you and I have much to talk about.”

“I think we do,” he said, tentative, and drew back. “Do you like fish? I was going to chase some to shore for Tony to barbecue.”

 “That,” I said, “Sounds like great fun. Will you teach me how?”

His great yellow eyes lit up. “I don’t think you’re big enough!”

I unhooked Mjolnir and swung her around. My nephew flinched, but then seemed to realize my intent when the waves parted with the breeze.  The momentary fear turned to fascination—I could see it on him. So expressive, for so reptilian a face. “Try me,” I said.

His great jaw dropped. It was my turn to flinch before I realized that it was not a threat—it was a grin.

“Tony,” he said, “Fire up the grill again.”

I laughed merrily, met my brother’s bemused eyes, and readied myself for a new adventure.

 

 

 

 

 

**THE END**

**Author's Note:**

> A note on all the marine animals in this story! 
> 
> They are all REAL. (Except for the bit where the ocean glows; this happens, but as far as I know, it only happens in certain places. It's called biolumenescence. Diel vertical migration- that's stuff from the deep coming up at night - is definitely a thing though). I adore the ocean and everything in it, and have spent many years studying it. This story was super exciting for me because usually, I have to research the crap out of things when I write. Fair Winds and Following Seas? OH MY GOD, the research that went into that. Below? Holy shit. So much research. But this one? YOU GUYS I KNEW WHAT I WAS TALKING ABOUT FOR ONCE!! 
> 
> Anyway, if you're curious about the awesome things that are part of Georgie's every day life, shoot me a comment and I can talk your ear off. (Cookie Cutter sharks, for example? Are hilarious. And horrifying. IMMA TAKE A CHUNK OUT OF YOU AND THEN SWIM AWAY REALLY FAST!! Best life strategy ever.)


End file.
